11/12/2023 0 Comments Names of chimpanzee teeth![]() ![]() The lack of comparable primate fossils in other parts of the world helps to cement the case. Animals such as tenrecs and lemurs arrived on Madagascar by rafting from mainland Africa across a distance of more than 260 miles, for example, and small lizards island-hop in the Bahamas on natural rafts. ![]() “I think everyone kind of shakes their heads at primates rafting long or even moderate distances,” Miller says, but such events have happened at other times and are still going on today. During this window of prehistory, the path between the continents was passable by sea. In addition, the buildup of glaciers in Antarctica around that time caused sea levels to drop, making the passage shorter than it is today. The span of the Atlantic Ocean between the two continents measured about 930 to 1,300 miles apart compared to the modern expanse of 1,770 miles. The process was entirely accidental, relying on luck and the fact that the world was different 32 million years ago.ĭrying screen-washed sediment near the Santa Rosa fossil site.īack then, during a time known as the Late Eocene, Africa and South America were significantly closer. No, these primates were not lashing together rafts and intentionally setting sail for uncharted territories. The sudden appearance of Ucayalipithecus in South America, far from its closest relatives in prehistoric Africa, hints that these monkeys the same sort of transatlantic journey that the ancestors of New World monkeys must have endured. It’s unlikely that another form of mammal, or even another form of monkey, independently evolved teeth the same shape and size as those of the parapithecids that were alive at the same time, Miller notes. “Parapithecid teeth are distinctive,” says Wake Forest University paleoprimatologist Ellen Miller, who was not involved in the research. The researchers have given the name Ucayalipithecus perdita to the teeth representing the new species. Now it seems parapithecids were present in South America by about 32 million years ago. ![]() “The new molars were almost identical to those of the parapithecid Qatrania, which is known from sites that I worked in the Fayum area of Egypt,” Seiffert says. “It’s only when we look into the details of the teeth, crania, and long bones that we see there are important differences,” he notes, with the arrangement of bumps and troughs on the teeth acting as a reliable guide to which fossil belonged to which family. To a casual observer, Seiffert says, these primates would have looked somewhat similar to today’s New World monkeys. Seiffert and colleagues propose the primate teeth they found in Peru belonged to a now-extinct group of monkeys called parapithecids. A single molar can be more useful in identifying a fossil than a set of ribs or a leg bone. Plus, mammal teeth change rapidly over evolutionary time and are often distinct. The natural durability of teeth gives them a better chance at lasting for millions of years. While teeth may be small, they are often crucial pieces of the mammalian fossil record. They also found evidence of a second primate group, one thought to have lived only in Africa.ĭescribed today in Science, the key fossils are a set of four teeth. Here, roughly 32 million-year-old rock preserves the remains of bats, relatives of capybaras, and early New World monkeys. On the banks of Río Yurúa, close to the border of Peru and Brazil, University of Southern California paleontologist Erik Seiffert documented a fossil site that contains a mix of the strange and familiar. A fossil find in Peru suggests that a different, entirely extinct family of primates undertook the same kind of oceanic voyage more than 30 million years ago. According to a new study, they were not the only primates to make the trip. In a strange twist of evolutionary history, the ancestors of modern South American monkeys such as the capuchin and woolly monkeys first came to the New World by floating across the Atlantic Ocean on mats of vegetation and earth.
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