Lately found skull belonging to the most ancient baboon supports the belief that the Papio angusticeps fossil is the earliest known member of the modern baboon species Papio hamadryas. Researchers from the University of Witwatersrand said that the skull, which is two million years old, was discovered at the Malapa fossil site.

Researcher Christopher Gilbert, of Hunter College, said, "Baboons are known to have co-existed with hominins at several fossil localities in East Africa and South Africa and they are sometimes even used as comparative models in human evolution".

Researchers are hoping to know more about the species. Modern baboons are divided into populations live across sub-Saharan Africa and spread into the Arabian Peninsula. Gilbert said that molecular clock studies have estimated that baboons have diverged from their closest relatives around 1.8 to 2.2 million years ago.

All the fossils that have been found of that time period were either too fragmentary or too primitive to be confirmed as the members of the living species Papio hamadryas. Study researchers have conducted the analysis of the specimen found in Malapa and it has been confirmed that P. angusticeps be an early population of P. hamadryas.

The findings have helped to know more about baboon evolution. The research paper helps know how the evolution has supported apes during the early time.