Nakalipithecus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nakalipithecus
Temporal occurrence
late Miocene
9.9 to 9.8 million years
Locations
Systematics
Monkey (anthropoidea)
Old World Monkey (Catarrhini)
Human (Hominoidea)
Apes (Hominidae)
Nakalipithecus
Scientific name
Nakalipithecus
Kunimatsu et al., 2007
species
  • Nakalipithecus nakayamai

Nakalipithecus is an extinct genus of primates that was foundin East Africa during the late Miocene . In Kenya , on the eastern edge of the Great African Rift Valley , fossils that were assigned to this genus dated their discoverers in the first description of Nakalipithecus in 2007 using the 39 Ar- 40 Ar method in the time before 9.9 to 9, 8 million years ago.

Naming

Nakalipithecus is an artificial word . The name of the genus is derived from the site in the area of ​​Nakali and from the Greek word πίθηκος (in ancient Greek pronounced píthēkos : "monkey"). The epithet of the only scientifically described species so far , Nakalipithecus nakayamai , commemorates the deceased geologist Katsuhiro Nakayama, who was part of the excavation team, which mainly came from Japan. Nakalipithecus nakayamai thus means "Nakayama monkey from Nakali."

Initial description

As a holotype of the genus and at the same time the type species Nakalipithecus nakayamai , in the first description by Yutaka Kunimatsu et al. the fragment of a lower jaw with three preserved large molars of a presumably adult individual identified (archive number KNM-NA46400). A further eleven individual teeth from the same site were added to the holotype as paratypes. This is near Nakali, 40 km west of Maralal , the capital of the Samburu district . The fossils are kept in the Nairobi National Museum (formerly: Kenya National Museum, hence KNM) in Nairobi .

features

In the first description of Nakalipithecus , its habitat is interpreted as forested on the basis of fossil finds of other animal species - including slippery monkeys and colobus monkeys of the genus Microcolobus .

The height of Nakalipithecus is comparable to that of female gorillas . The characteristics of Nakalipithecus are similar to those of the somewhat younger Ouranopithecus macedoniensis , discovered in Greece , but whose more thickened enamel suggests a more open and drier habitat.

Ouranopithecus macedoniensis - although known only from Greece - had repeatedly been considered as a possible close relative of the common ancestors of gorillas , chimpanzees and the hominini . Approximately equal to old treasure of Nakalipithecus provides the authors, according to his first description new references to the anatomy of the immediate ancestors of all African today's great apes ; It is expressly mentioned that this genus “ could be close to the last common ancestor of the remaining African great apes and humans ”. This last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans is mostly dated to the time 9 to 8 million years ago, whereby fossil finds from the late Miocene (from 11 to 5 million years ago) are very rare in Africa. Exceptions are, for example, Chororapithecus and Samburupithecus kiptalami , whose upper jaw was discovered in 1982 in northern Kenya in the Samburu Hills , with an unclear relationship . From this poverty of African finds it had previously been repeatedly concluded that the direct ancestors of today's great apes may have lived in Eurasia and immigrated from there to Africa.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yutaka Kunimatsu et al: A new Late Miocene great ape from Kenya and its implications for the origins of African great apes and humans. In: PNAS . Volume 104, No. 49, 2007, pp. 19220-19225; doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0706190104