In August, 2007 Gen Suwa and crew reported on a new Ethiopian Miocene Ape, Chororapithecus abyssinicus. And today, Kenyan and Japanese paleoanthropologists have published their study of a fragment of a mandible and 11 teeth, dating back to between 9.8 and 9.88 million years, which was found 2005.
The fossils were unearthed in volcanic mud flow deposits in the northern Nakali region of Kenya. It has been dutifully dubbed Nakalipithecus nakayamai, the genus assigned after the area it was found in while the species is named after Japanese geologist Katsuhiro Nakayama who died while working on the project. Comparisons of the size of the teeth of N. nakayamai shows that it was comparable to a modern female gorilla and a female orangutan. It also resembles another Miocene ape Ouranopithecus macedoniensis, from Greece but several aspects of the dentition indicate a less specialized diet than Ouranopithecus, and place Nakalipithecus in a genus of its own.
I’ll report more on this when I get my hands on the paper.
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November 13, 2007 at 1:18 pm
[...] anthropologists have just published their report on a similarly aged Miocene ape which is dubbed, Nakalipithecus nakayamai. It resembles Ouranopithecus macedoniensis a lot, which reminds me you may wanna read about a new [...]
November 17, 2007 at 5:19 pm
[...] of a new publication announcing a new Miocene ape. We’ve had the pleasure to do so, with the introduction of Nakalipithecus nakayamai, a Miocene Ape from Kenya. PNAS is carrying the paper now, under the [...]
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