n. A genus of extinct apes known from Miocene and Pliocene fossil remains found in Africa and Eurasia and believed to be ancestral to the living great apes, including humans. [New Latin Dryopithēcus, genus name : Greek drūs, oak (in reference to the apes' arboreal lifestyle and to the fossil remains of oak found in the same area as some of the first known specimens of the genus); see deru- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots + Greek pithēkos, ape.] |
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