{"id":58252,"date":"2025-08-21T11:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T08:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/?p=58252"},"modified":"2025-08-21T11:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T08:59:13","slug":"max-planck-institute-for-anthropology-in-leipzig-funds-nmnhs-bas-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/?p=58252&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Max Planck Institute for Anthropology in Leipzig funds NMNHS-BAS research"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The excavations of the palaeontological team of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNHS-BAS) in the Late Miocene Azmaka trove (Chirpan region), led by Prof. Nikolai Spassov, have aroused particular international interest in connection with the discovery of a hominid femur bone (a fossil member of the human family) dated 7.2 million years ago. After the publication in 2012 of a hominid tooth found in the same trove, this is the second find discovered by the team. The femur, presumably attributed to the hominid Graecopithecus<\/em> described by a mandible found during World War II near Athens, has important implications for palaeoanthropology. It provides an opportunity to study the mode of locomotion of this latest European pre-human hominid. The now completed study (in print) shows extremely interesting results related to the beginning of human evolution.<\/p>\n

The famous palaeoanthropologist Prof. David Begun from the University of Toronto has been working in the NMNHS-BAS team for three years. At the beginning of August this year. the National Museum of Natural History at BAS signed a memorandum with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, according to which the German institute will finance over the next three years the excavations of the NMNHS-BAS in the search for hominid fossils in the Late Miocene of Bulgaria and also in the Republic of North Macedonia, together with a team from the Museum of Natural History of North Macedonia in Skopje. The first excavations started in September this year.<\/p>\n

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Enlarged models of the tooth and the femur bone of a hominid found in the palaeontological locality of Azmaka (Chirpan region), aged 7.2 million years, presented in the exposition of NMNHS-BAS opened at the end of 2024 (and still existing) in the „Dimitar Kovachev“ palaeontological branch of NMNHS-BAS in Asenovgrad<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The excavations of the palaeontological team of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNHS-BAS) in the Late Miocene Azmaka trove (Chirpan region), led by Prof. Nikolai Spassov, have aroused particular international interest in connection with the discovery of a hominid femur bone (a fossil member of the human family) dated 7.2 million years ago. After the publication in 2012 of a hominid tooth found in the same trove, this is the second find discovered by the team. The femur, presumably attributed to the hominid Graecopithecus described by a mandible found during World War II near Athens, has important implications for palaeoanthropology. It provides an opportunity to study the mode of locomotion of this latest European pre-human hominid. The now completed study (in print) shows […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":58232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1771],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58253,"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58252\/revisions\/58253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bas.bg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}