i am not so sure about that...there a quite a number of researchers who are world experts in that field who have actually shown that in fact the complete opposite is true. Of course, these experts are immediately thrown out of the party, however, that is a result of the usual humanistic response to such things...if it doesn't fit the model hide it!
I have also found evidence of a consensus on the idea of Ape ancestor is in chaos and not reflective of your view at all. It appears that in fact we are seeing more evidence that points to the conclusions that most evolutionary human origin stories in this area are not compatible with the known fossils we have!
“When you look at the narrative for hominin origins, it’s just a big mess — there’s no consensus whatsoever,” said Sergio Almécija, a senior research scientist in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Anthropology
“Top-down” studies sometimes ignore the reality that living apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and hylobatids) are just the survivors of a much larger, and now mostly extinct, group.
the “bottom-up”approach are prone to giving individual fossil apes an important evolutionary role that fits a preexisting narrative.
“In The Descent of Man in 1871, Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa from an ancestor different from any living species. However, he remained cautious given the scarcity of fossils at the time,” Almécija said. “One hundred fifty years later, possible hominins — approaching the time of the human-chimpanzee divergence — have been found in eastern and central Africa, and some claim even in Europe. In addition, more than 50 fossil ape genera are now documented across Africa and Eurasia. However, many of these fossils show mosaic combinations of features that do not match expectations for ancient representatives of the modern ape and human lineages. As a consequence, there is no scientific consensus on the evolutionary role played by these fossil apes.”
“Living ape species are specialized species, relicts of a much larger group of now extinct apes. When we consider all evidence — that is, both living and fossil apes and hominins — it is clear that a human evolutionary story based on the few ape species currently alive is missing much of the bigger picture,” said study co-author Ashley Hammond, an assistant curator in the Museum’s Division of Anthropology.
“Fossil apes and human evolution” by Sergio Almécija, Ashley S. Hammond, Nathan E. Thompson, Kelsey D. Pugh, Salvador Moyà-Solà and David M. Alba, 7 May 2021,
Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abb4363
