'Man's first ancestor looked like a squirrel'

First human ancestor - a primitive tiny animal - looked like a squirrel, a new study has claimed.

Newly discovered fossilized bones for the world's oldest and most primitive known primate, Purgatorius, reveal a tiny, agile animal that spent much of its time eating fruit and climbing trees. The fossils are the first known below-the-head bones for Purgatorius.

"The ankle bones show that it had a mobile ankle joint like primates today that live in trees," co-author Stephen Chester, a Yale University vertebrate paleontologist, said. "This mobility would have allowed for rotating the foot in different directions as it adjusted to different angles presented by tree trunks," Chester said.

"It also shows that the first primates did not have elongate ankles that you see in many living primates today that are thought to be related to leaping behaviours," added Chester.

He conducted the study with colleagues Jonathan Bloch of the Florida Museum of Natural History and William Clemens, a professor emeritus at the University of California. Researchers believe the specialized ankle bones of Purgatorius played a key role in the evolutionary success of early primates.

PTI