Did Europe once host a thriving population of sugar-loving, forest-dwelling great apes?

Nature · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Long before humans dominated the continent, Europe was home to Dryopithecus, a genus of great apes that thrived in warm, paratropical forests. These creatures navigated a world of fruit and honey, potentially using unique metabolic adaptations to survive seasonal shifts before a changing climate forced their eventual extinction.

Discovered in 1856 by Édouard Lartet in the French Pyrenees, Dryopithecus has long been a source of taxonomic confusion. For over a century, scientists struggled to classify these Miocene apes, often creating new species from fragmentary remains. Today, only one species, D. fontani, remains uncontested. These apes lived between 12.5 and 11.1 million years ago, inhabiting lush, seasonal forests alongside animals like rhinoceroses and early proboscideans.

Physically, Dryopithecus was a blend of familiar traits. While their faces resembled those of modern gorillas, their anatomy suggests a quadrupedal lifestyle, walking on all fours rather than swinging through trees like orangutans. However, they likely utilized some suspensory behavior to reach fruit in trees that stood 5 to 12 meters high. Males, weighing about 44 kilograms, possessed larger canines than females, a trait typically linked to high levels of aggression in primates.

Their diet was remarkably high in sugar, sourced from ripe fruits and honey. This lifestyle may have been supported by a metabolic quirk: like other great apes, they lacked the enzyme uricase. This deficiency, which likely emerged around 15 million years ago, leads to higher uric acid levels, which can increase blood pressure and aid in building fat reserves—a crucial survival strategy for the leaner winter months. Some researchers even suggest this metabolic shift is linked to increased intelligence.

The eventual disappearance of these apes was driven by a cooling and drying trend during the late Miocene. As the climate shifted and the Alps rose, the warm, paratropical forests they relied on retreated, replaced by open shrubland. This environmental transformation highlights the fragility of their specialized existence, marking the end of a significant chapter in the evolutionary history of great apes in Europe.

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