Introduction

In the summer of 1991, remains of a facial cranium of the large fossil ape Dryopithecus were discovered in Can Llobateres by a team from the Institutde Paleontologia M. Crusafont in Sabadell (Barcelona, Spain). The locality of Can Llobateres (Figure 8.1) is situated near Sabadell, close to the Catalan coast in the north-west of the Iberian peninsula, and palaeomagnetic data indicate an age of 9.7 Ma for the lowest levels, and about 9.6 Ma for the highest, where the remains of Dryopithecus were localised (Moyà-Solà & Köhler, 1993,1995; Agustí et al., 1996). During the following years (1992–95), part of a skeleton was found, supposedly belonging to the same individual as the skull (Moyà-Solà & Köhler, 1996). Similarly, remains of two new individuals came from the same level: parts of the hindlimb of a small-sized individual (probably a female); and a milk tooth of an infant. These latest discoveries promise important findings in years to come, considering the great area that has yet to be excavated in this remarkable Catalan locality.

Without doubt, the genus Dryopithecus, described by Eduard Lartet in 1856 from the French locality of Saint Gaudens (Lartet, 1856), has played an important role in our understanding of extant and fossil hominoids. In the 1960s all species of large Miocene apes were included in this genus, which was considered a primitive group of species without any special relationship to living forms. However, in recent years, a growing number of specialists consider the genus Dryopithecus different from other forms such as Proconsul and Kenyapitheus, and its appearance is limited to Europe, where it lived from middle to upper Miocene (13 to 9 Ma).