Lomorupithecus
| Lomorupithecus | ||||||||||
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||
| Miocene | ||||||||||
| 19.5 to 18.3 million years | ||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Lomorupithecus | ||||||||||
| Rossie & McLatchy , 2006 | ||||||||||
| species | ||||||||||
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Lomorupithecus is an extinct genus of primates that was foundin East Africa in the early Miocene . In Ugandan district Napak discovered fossils that have been made to this genus are from sedimentary layers of the archaeological site Napak IX, which are between 19.5 ± 2.0 and 18.3 ± 0.4 million years old.
Naming
Lomorupithecus is an artificial word . The name of the genus is derived from the word lomoru , which means "mountain man" in the Karamojong language , and also from the Greek word πίθηκος ( pronounced píthēkos in ancient Greek : "monkey"). "Mountain Man" refers to the late Will Dows, who lived on Mount Akiism - on which the Napak IX site is also located - and was so named by the Karamojong. The epithet of the only scientifically described species to date , Lomorupithecus harrisoni , honors the British paleoanthropologist Terry Harrison , a specialist in the morphology and paleoecology of Miocene and Pliocene primates. Lomorupithecus harrisoni therefore means "harrison's miner monkey".
Initial description
The holotype of the genus and at the same time of the type Lomorupithecus harrisoni is the partially dentate upper jaw of an adult, presumably male individual with associated facial bones from the area of the nose (archive number BUMP 266), the three fragments of which were found on an area of approximately two square meters; the gender could be reconstructed on the basis of preserved tooth features. The first description also referred to the fossil BUMP 268, the fragment of a young male lower jaw with two preserved teeth, some preserved tooth roots and a second molar that was not yet erupted, which is visible in the X-ray . The body weight of the animal was estimated to be around 4.3 kg based on the size of the teeth.
According to this find situation, the distinction from other genera was based on the tooth features. If the diagnosis formulated in the first description is correct, Lomorupithecus harrisoni would be the first Afro-Arabic representative of the Pliopithecoidea superfamily , which is otherwise only known from Eurasia .
According to the first description of the genus and type species published in 2006, they show characteristics of a close relationship to, among others, Pliopithecus antiquus . Due to the incomplete tradition of fossils of small Old World monkeys from the early Miocene, the authors of the first description did not assign the genus to a specific family .
Individual evidence
- ↑ James B. Rossie, Laura MacLatchy: A new pliopithecoid genus from the early Miocene of Uganda. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 50, 2006, pp. 568-586, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2005.12.007
- ↑ The abbreviation BUMP stands for Boston University / Uganda Museum / Makerere University Paleontology Expedition.