Anoiapithecus

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Anoiapithecus
Temporal occurrence
middle Miocene
12.5 to 11.3 million years
Locations
Systematics
Monkey (anthropoidea)
Old World Monkey (Catarrhini)
Human (Hominoidea)
Apes (Hominidae)
Anoiapithecus
Scientific name
Anoiapithecus
Moyà-Solà , 2009
Art
  • Anoiapithecus brevirostris

Anoiapithecus is an extinct genus of primates thatoccurredin Spain during the Middle Miocene and isattributedby some authors to the Dryopithecini tribe . In the province of Barcelona , near the municipality of Els Hostalets de Pierola, fossils that were identified for this species dated their discoverers in the first description of Anoiapithecus in 2009 on the basis of biostratigraphic analyzes to the time around 11.9 million years ago. The fossils were discovered by the palaeontologist Salvador Moyà-Solà - like Pierolapithecus in2004- placed in the vicinity of the last common ancestors of all great apes and expressly assigned to the great apes (Hominidae) as a fossil species.

Naming

Anoiapithecus is an artificial word . The name of the genus is derived from the location in the area of ​​Els Hostalets de Pierola in the administrative district of Anoia , near the Montserrat Mountains, and from Greek πίθηκος, pronounced in ancient Greek píthēkos = "monkey". The epithet of the only scientifically described species so far , Anoiapithecus brevirostris , refers to the reconstruction of the shape of the preserved facial skull, derived from Latin brevis = "short" and rostrum = "snout". Anoiapithecus brevirostris consequently means “short-snouted monkey from Anoia”.

Initial description

In the first description of the genus and type species Anoiapithecus brevirostris, the holotype was identified as the heavily fragmented facial skull of an adult male (archive number IPS-43000), which is stored in the Institut Català de Paleontologia of the Universitat Autònoma in Barcelona . Among other things, fragments of bones from the area of ​​the eye sockets, the almost completely preserved palate and parts of the upper and lower jaw with preserved canines and some molars could be assigned to this fossil . The fossil bones were uncovered at the Abocador de Can Mata (ACM / C3-Aj) site.

Anoiapithecus was placed in the first description in the closer relationship to Dryopithecus , which is interpreted by other researchers as a side branch to the development of the great apes.

Importance of the find

Finds of humans (Hominoidea) from the middle Miocene - the time about 16 to 10 million years ago - are so far relatively rare. However, they are considered to be particularly important for the reconstruction of the tribal history of the great apes, since the lineage of orangutans , chimpanzees , gorillas and humans separated from that of the "small great apes " (such as the gibbons ) at this time. Depending on the calibration , this point in time is dated to the Early or Middle Miocene, with a range from 17 to 12 million years ago. What the last common ancestor of these two lineages looked like is so far unknown, and where he lived is controversial. The remains of African fossils, such as Kenyapithecus wickeri and Nacholapithecus and Equatorius africanus , which have only become more numerous since the 1990s, have been placed near these fossil ancestors . Other researchers had previously deduced from the lack of African finds and the discovery of similarly old fossils in Eurasia that the split between the two lines of development occurred outside of Africa.

In the first description of Anoiapithecus, the Spanish paleoanthropologists agree with this latter hypothesis and interpret their reconstruction of the fossil as an indication of the origin of the great Asian and African great apes in Europe. Evidence is given, among other things, of his flat face without an extended nose area and various special features of the teeth. They derived further evidence for their hypothesis from a comparison of their reconstruction of the preserved facial bones of Anoiapithecus with the facial bones of other species, including various fossil species such as Hispanopithecus , Ouranopithecus , Ankarapithecus and Sivapithecus, as well as the great apes still alive today.

A similar argument in the first publication of the somewhat older Pierolapithecus, recovered from the same site in Spain in 2004, was contradicted shortly afterwards by other researchers. The hypothesis of the Spanish researchers was also questioned in New Scientist by paleoanthropologist Jay Kelley, University of Illinois at Chicago , who pointed out that too few findings were known from Africa to be able to pinpoint a specific area for the origin of the great apes to be able to. The German paleoanthropologist Friedemann Schrenk made a similar statement in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “So far, there are simply no comparable bone finds from Africa from this time.” But that does not mean that no great apes developed there; Rather, the region around Barcelona is rich in fossils because they have been preserved there “exceptionally well”. In the humid and warm forests of Africa, on the other hand, “the tradition potential is zero”.

The family of the ancestors of Anoiapithecus includes the genus Pliobates .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Salvador Moyà-Solà et al .: A unique Middle Miocene European hominoid and the origins of the human clade. In: PNAS . Volume 106, No. 24, 2009, pp. 9601-9606, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0811730106
  2. ^ Salvador Moyà-Solà et al. :: Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, a New Middle Miocene Great Ape from Spain. In: Science . Volume 306, No. 5700, 2004, pp. 1339-1344, doi: 10.1126 / science.1103094
  3. ↑ David R. Begun and Carol V. Ward: Comment on "Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, a New Middle Miocene Great Ape from Spain." In: Science. Volume 308, No. 5719, 2005, p. 203, doi: 10.1126 / science.1108139
  4. ↑ Bon Holmes: Were our earliest hominid ancestors European? In: New Scientist from June 1, 2009, full text .
  5. ↑ Christina Berndt: Our Spanish heritage. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of June 3, 2009, full text