Time for a refresher course in anthropology...
Pan troglodytes is a term you may be hearing in the near future
From wikipedia-
In local parlance, the
great apes of the Bili Forest fall into two distinct groups. There are the 'tree beaters', who disperse high into the trees to stay safe, and who easily succumb to the poison arrows used by local hunters. Then there are the 'lion killers', who seldom climb trees, are bigger and darker, and are unaffected by the poison arrows.
When
Karl Ammann, a Swiss photographer and anti-
bushmeat campaigner, first visited the region in 1996, he was looking for gorillas, but instead discovered a skull that had dimensions like that of a chimpanzee, but with prominent crest like a gorilla. Ammann purchased a photograph, taken by a motion-detecting camera, from poachers that captured an image of what looked like immense chimpanzees. Ammann also measured a fecal dropping three times as big as chimp dung and footprints as large as or larger than a gorilla's.
In 2000, Ammann returned to the area described by the bushmeat hunter with a group of ape researchers. Although they did not find a live Bili Ape, they did find several well-worn ground nests, characteristic of gorillas rather than chimpanzees, in swampy river beds.
The Bili Ape has been reported to walk upright, bipedally, at times, with the looks of a giant chimpanzee. Later observations by Hicks revealed that they are knuckle-walkers like other chimpanzees that only occasionally walk bipedally. Their footprints, which range from 28 to 34 centimeters, are longer than the largest common chimp and gorilla footprints, which average 26 cm and 29 cm, respectively. Hicks' team, in a year and a half of study, found no footprints longer than 30 cm, and most have been smaller.
According to Williams, "They have a very flat face, a wide muzzle and their brow-ridge runs straight across and overhangs. They seem to turn grey very early in life, but instead of turning grey-black like a gorilla, they turn grey all over." They develop uniform grey fur independently of age and sex, which suggests that greying takes place early in life-opposed to all known gorilla species, where only males gray as they age, with graying restricted to their backs.
Bili Ape skulls have the prominent brow ridge and
may have a
sagittal crest similar to that of a robust great ape, or gorilla, but other morphological measurements are more like those of chimpanzees. It should be made clear that only one of the many skulls found at Bili had a sagittal crest, thus it cannot yet be considered typical for the population. Chimpanzee skulls are 190 to 210 millimeters long, but four of five Bili Ape skulls measured more than 220 millimeters, well beyond the end of the normal chimpanzee range.
[11]
Female Bili apes have genital swellings similar to other chimpanzees.
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