We ain’t monkeyin’ around here.
The mandible of Algeripithecus. Photo from Science Daily. The debate for the origin of anthropoid points to two locations. One hypothesis supports the notion that anthropoids originated from Africa while the other argues that anthropoids originated from Asia. The model for the African origin hypothesis rests on Algeripithecus minutus, a fossil discovered in Algeria, Africa... Continue Reading →
A chimpanzee mother using rocks (hammer and anvil) to break open nuts, an example of tool use in primates. Photo from Duke University. A new branch of archaeology is being introduced by international scientists. Led by University of Calgary archaeologist Julio Mercader and 17 other co-authors of the paper "Primate archaeology", advocate a new "Paleoanthropology... Continue Reading →
By way of Afarensis is news of a new Middle Miocene hominoid species found from the Abocador de Can Mata site in Spain. It is classified as a great ape with many afropithecid and several kenyapithecine features which I'll give an overview of in a bit. Furthermore, the specimen, IPS43000, is 11.9 million years old,... Continue Reading →
John Flynn, André Wyss, John Finarelli, and Karen Sears have been studying the brains of the ancestors of modern Neotropical primates and their early Old World fossil simian counterparts. They were able to determine that the brains of platyrrhines of the Americas were as small as those of the catarrhines of Africa and Eurasia, which... Continue Reading →
The collective understanding of Miocene African primate evolution, especially ape evolution, is generally unfounded. Why? Because the fossil record is spotty, there are only a handful of primates from the Miocene. The Miocene lasted from 23.8 to 5.3 million years ago, and a lot of interesting things happened in the ape lineage during that time.... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
