NUMTs offer an opportunity to study ancient diversity of mitochondrial lineages and to discover prehistoric interspecies hybridization. Ancient hybridization have been first detected (using NUMTs) in bristletails, then in colobine monkeys, and, most recently, in a direct human ancestor. The hominid hybridization happened about the time of human/chimpanzee/gorilla separation. This latter study concerns a human NUMT shared with chimpanzee and gorilla. Joint phylogeny of the three NUMT sequences and the mitochondrial genomes of great apes implies that a common ancestor of the three NUMTs has been transferred to human/chimp/gorilla lineage from a hominid species separated from them by about 4.5 million years of mtDNA evolution. While hybridization of this magnitude is not unheard of among primates, its occurrence in the direct human lineage, around the critical time of human/ape speciation, is a startling result. Additional NUMTs with similar phylogenies indicate that such events may be not unique.