Doing so for African apes and humans, if even possible, will require a far more complete and high-quality fossil record, especially from Africa, than is currently available. However, it deviates from the usual narrative of ape and human evolution to argue for the origins of African apes, and possibly the human lineage, in Europe rather than Africa, a notion long championed by the senior author's paleoanthropological mentor and collaborator, David R. Begun, who also wrote the book's foreword. The argument is based on three recent but controversial finds or analyses: the 11-million-year-old remains discovered by the senior author in Germany of a fossil ape interpreted to show erect posture and arboreal bipedal behaviors, a poorly preserved jaw of an approximately 7-million-year-old ape from Greece advanced by the authors as possibly the earliest hominin (human lineage), and purported 5.7-million-year-old hominin bipedal footprints in Crete. [Extracted from the article]