Humans may have originally caught malaria from gorillas, scientists say.
Until now, it was thought that the human malaria parasite split off from a chimpanzee parasite when humans and chimpanzees last had a common ancestor.
But researchers from the US, three African countries, and Europe have examined malaria parasites in great ape faeces.
They found the DNA from western gorilla parasites was the most similar to human parasites.
Cerebral malariaMalaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, and is carried by mosquitoes.
The most common species found in Africa, Plasmodium falciparum, causes dangerous cerebral malaria. Over 800,000 people die from malaria each year in the continent.
Until now, scientists had assumed that when the evolutionary tree of humans split off from that of chimpanzees - around five to seven million years ago - so had Plasmodium falciparum.
This would have meant that humans and malaria co-evolved to live together. But new evidence suggests human malaria is much newer.
Dr Beatrice Hahn of the University of Birmingham, Alabama, in the US, is part of a team that had been studying HIV and related infections in humans and great apes.
BBC News
