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PALEONTOLOGY: Shaking the Earliest Branches of Anthropoid Primate Evolution
Jean-Jacques Jaeger and Laurent Marivaux
Primates living today are believed to share a common ancestor that originated in either Africa or Asia. Fossil examples of such anthropoid ancestors have been found in both continents, so pushing back the origins to a single location has been controversial. In their Perspective, Jaeger and Marivaux discuss results reported in the same issue by Seiffert et al. that may put part of the controversy to rest. Seiffert et al. describe the earliest and most complete African anthropoid fossils from the Fayum desert region of Egypt. Cranial and dental fossils of two different small species were found, and their character, especially the features of the fossil teeth, suggests an ancient evolutionary history in Africa. At the same time, the phylogenetic analysis of Seiffert et al. is consistent with the view that African anthropoids immigrated from Asia at a very early date, probably before the late Paleocene (60 million years ago), possibly followed by later waves of immigration.
The authors are at the Laboratoire de Paléontologie, Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution, Université Montpellier II, F-34095 Montpellier Cedex 05, France. E-mail: jaeger{at}isem.univ-montp2.fr, marivaux{at}isem.univ-montp2.fr
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In Science Magazine
REPORTS
Erik R. Seiffert, Elwyn L. Simons, William C. Clyde, James B. Rossie, Yousry Attia, Thomas M. Bown, Prithijit Chatrath, and Mark E. Mathison (14 October 2005) Science310 (5746), 300.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1116569] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Anthropoid versus strepsirhine status of the African Eocene primates Algeripithecus and Azibius: craniodental evidence.
R. Tabuce, L. Marivaux, R. Lebrun, M. Adaci, M. Bensalah, P.-H. Fabre, E. Fara, H. Gomes Rodrigues, L. Hautier, J.-J. Jaeger, et al. (2009)
Proc R Soc B
276, 4087-4094
|Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »
