Primate Fossil More Than 11 Million Years Old Discovered

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Primate Fossil More Than 11 Million Years Old Discovered
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 102439.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2010) — Catalan researchers have discovered in the rubbish dump of Can Mata in the Vallès-Penedès basin (Catalonia) a new species of Pliopithecus primate, considered an extinct family of primitive Catarrhini primates (or "Old World monkeys"). The fragments of jaw and molars found in this large site demonstrate that Pliopithecus canmatensis belongs to this group, which includes the first Catarrhini that dispersed from Africa to Eurasia.

Named Pliopithecus canmatensis, in honour of the place they were discovered in Catalonia, the new fossil species sheds light on the evolution of the superfamily of the Pliopithecoidea, primates that include various genera of basal Catarrhini, a group that diverged before the separation of the two current superfamilies of the group: the cercopithecoids (Old World monkeys) and the hominoids (anthromorphs and humans); and which prospered in Eurasia during the Early and Late Miocene (between 23.5 and 5.3 million years ago).

"Based on the anatomical, palaeobiographical and biostratigraphic information available, the most probable evolutionary scenario for this group is that the Pliopithecoidea were the first Catarrhini to disperse from Africa to Eurasia, where they experienced an evolutionary radiation in a continent initially deserted of other anthropoids (apes)," David Alba, main author of the study and researcher at the Catalan Institute for Palaeontology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), said.

The analysis of the dental pieces and the fragments of jaw discovered on the Catalan site has been published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

According to the conclusions of the study, the new species belongs to the subfamily of the pliopithecines, which could have originated from an ancestor called the dionsisopithecine in Asia, from where they would have dispersed into Europe at the end of the Early Miocene (some 15 million years ago).

"On the Iberian Peninsula, the Pliopithecoidea have only been recorded in the Vallès-Penedès basin, where they are represented by pliopithecines and crouzelines," Alba confirms. During the Middle Miocene the crouzelines could have evolved locally in Europe from a pliopithecine ancestor, and dispersed into Asia afterwards, during the Late Miocene (some 10 million years ago). For the researchers, a greater knowledge of the palaeobiodiversity of the group will help to clarify the relationship between the three known subfamilies.

In search of clues

Another clue to clarify the relationships within this group is the recent discovery in China of a new genus and species of Pliopithecoidea, some 15 or 16 million years old and corresponding "probably" to a basal member of the crouzelines.

"This could indicate that the pliopithecines and crouzelines went to Asia before dispersing into Europe," points out the palaeontologist.

Although the relationship between the Pliopithecoidea and the rest of the Catarrhini is still not very clear, the former retain some very primitive characteristics. "However, in contrast to the Platyrrhini (New World monkeys), the Pliopithecoidea only present two premolars, meaning they can be considered as Catarrhini," Alba explains.

According to the new study, some characteristics derived from the dentition suggest that these animals are a 'clade' (monophyletic group) which, based on an African ancestor that migrated to Eurasia during the Early Miocene, was the first to radiate in this continent.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 102439.htm

 

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This one is older still, the last primate in North America before humans arrived.

The story of Ekgmowechashala, the final primate to inhabit North America before Homo sapiens or Clovis people, reads like a spaghetti Western: A grizzled and mysterious loner, against the odds, ekes out an existence on the American Plains.

Except this tale unfolded about 30 million years ago, just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition during which North America saw great cooling and drying, making the continent less hospitable to warmth-loving primates.

Now, paleontologists from the University of Kansas and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing have published evidence in the Journal of Human Evolution shedding light on the long-standing saga of Ekgmowechashala, based on fossil teeth and jaws found in both Nebraska and China.

To do so, the researchers first had to reconstruct its family tree, a job helped by the discovery of an even more ancient Chinese "sister taxon" of Ekgmowechashala the team has named Palaeohodites (or "ancient wanderer"). The Chinese fossil discovery resolves the mystery of Ekgmowechashala's presence in North America, showing it was an immigrant rather than the product of local evolution.

"This project focuses on a very distinctive fossil primate known to paleontologists since the 1960s," said lead author Kathleen Rust, a doctoral candidate in paleontology at KU's Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.

"Due to its unique morphology and its representation only by dental remains, its place on the mammalian evolutionary tree has been a subject of contention and debate. There's been a prevailing consensus leaning towards its classification as a primate. But the timing and appearance of this primate in the North American fossil record are quite unusual. It appears suddenly in the fossil record of the Great Plains more than 4 million years after the extinction of all other North American primates, which occurred around 34 million years ago."

In the 1990s, Rust's doctoral adviser and co-author Chris Beard, KU Foundation Distinguished Professor and senior curator of vertebrate paleontology, collected fossils from the Nadu Formation in the Baise Basin in Guangxi, China, that closely resembled the Ekgmowechashala material known from North America. By that time, Ekgmowechashala was notoriously enigmatic among North American paleontologists.

"When we were working there, we had absolutely no idea that we would find an animal that was closely related to this bizarre primate from North America, but literally as soon as I picked up the jaw and saw it, I thought, 'Wow, this is it,'" Beard said.

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-fossils-tale-primate-inhabit-north.html