A Pleistocene assemblage of near-modern Papio hamadryas from the Middle Awash study area, Afar Rift, Ethiopia.

These new near-modern P. hamadryas fossils provide a window into population-level variation in the later Pleistocene. Our findings echo previous suggestions from genomic studies that the papionin family tree may have included a ghost population and provide a basis for future testing of hypotheses regarding hybridization in the recent evolutionary history of this taxon.