Ouranopithecus macedoniensis

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Ouranopithecus macedoniensis
Skull fragment with upper jaw of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis from the site Xirochori 1 (Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris)

Skull fragment with upper jaw
of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis
from the site Xirochori 1
( Muséum national d'histoire naturelle , Paris )

Temporal occurrence
late Miocene ( Vallesium )
10.0 to 9.0 million years
Locations
Systematics
Monkey (anthropoidea)
Old World Monkey (Catarrhini)
Human (Hominoidea)
Apes (Hominidae)
Ouranopithecus
Ouranopithecus macedoniensis
Scientific name
Ouranopithecus macedoniensis
Bonis et al., 1974

Ouranopithecus macedoniensis is an extinct species of primates in the genus Ouranopithecus that was foundin Central Macedonia ( Greece )during the late Miocene . The age of a number of the fossils ascribed to it wasdated around 10 to 9 million years agoin the European Land Mammal Mega-Zone MN10on the basis of magnetostratigraphic measurements and biostratigraphic analyzes. The exact classification of the species in the family tree of the great apes is unclear. It was repeatedly discussed but that Ouranopithecus macedoniensis basis of characteristics of the teeth as a possible ancestor of the Australopithecines had to consider.

A sister species is ouranopithecus turkae whose fossils in Central Anatolia ( Turkey ), on the northeastern edge of the Çankırı - basin were discovered. A younger relative from southern Greece is Graecopithecus freybergi .

Naming

Ouranopithecus is an artificial word . The name of the genus is derived from Greek: Οὐρανός, Ouranos = "sky" and Greek  πίθηκος (ancient Greek pronounced) píthēkos , monkey. The epithet macedoniensis refers to the location in Central Macedonia . Ouranopithecus macedoniensis consequently means "sky monkey from Macedonia". According to note 6 of the first description , however, the name of the genus was derived "du grec 'ouranos' = pluie", i.e. from "rain", which refers to the site of the first fossil, which was found by the French excavators "Ravin de la Pluie" ( = "Rain Canyon") was named. According to this reference, the genus should therefore apparently have been called "rain monkey".

In the first description of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis in 1975, the authors had mentioned that a comparison of the juvenile lower jaw with the relatively poorly preserved lower jaw discovered in 1944 and named Graecopithecus freybergi by Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald in 1972 from the site of Pyrgos Vassilissis Amalia in the Near Athens was not possible. Should this fossil be assigned to the finds called Ouranopithecus macedoniensis , as some authors have assumed, the older name Graecopithecus freybergi would have had priority for the naming.

In fact, the fossils of both sites ( Pyrgos Vassilissis Amalia near Athens and Ravin de la pluie in Central Macedonia) were temporarily assigned to the same species, so that the older name Graecopithecus freybergi took precedence over Ouranopithecus macedoniensis according to international rules for zoological nomenclature . In 2017, however, the finds from the vicinity of Athens were re-dated, the age of which has now been determined to be only 7.175 million years. As a result, studies from 1997 and 2005 were given new weight, in which it was particularly emphasized that, in addition to the spatial distance, there are enough divergent morphological features so that the fossils of both sites can be assigned to different species. However, in 1997 it was proposed at the same time to assign the southern Greek fossils ( Graecopithecus freybergi ) and the northern Greek ( Ouranopithecus macedoniensis ) to the same genus, which would lead to the renaming of the northern Greek finds in "Graecopithecus macedoniensis" according to the rules for zoological nomenclature; however, this proposal has not caught on.

Initial description

Skull reconstruction of an Ouranopithecus macedoniensis based on the facial skull from the site "Xirochori 1" ( replica )
Lower jaw of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis from the site of Ravin de la pluie : left female, right male (replicas)

Holotype of the genus and at the same time the type species, Ouranopithecus macedoniensis , is a well-preserved, almost completely dentate, juvenile lower jaw discovered in 1973 (archive number RPl-54), which is located in Central Macedonia, in the lower Axios Valley , about 25 kilometers west of Thessaloniki and four Kilometers east of the municipality of Vathylakkos (Βαθύλακκος) at the site of Ravin de la pluie . This northern Greek fossil was declared by its discoverers in the first description in 1974 to be the holotype of a new species of the genus Dryopithecus , called Dryopithecus macedoniensis, and differentiated it from Dryopithecus fontani on the basis of various characteristics ; the assignment of all Miocene finds of humans to Dryopithecus - in Asia to Ramapithecus - was common since 1965, but was abandoned a few years after the discovery of the northern Greek fossil.

After the discovery of further lower jaws and one upper jaw (RPl-55, RPl-56; RPl-128) in Ravin de la pluie , the naming was revised in 1977 in favor of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis .

More finds

After new finds of jaw fragments and isolated teeth at Ravin de la pluie , fossils were also discovered at two other sites that were also assigned to Ouranopithecus macedoniensis in 1990 and 1993 , including a facial skull from the neighboring site "Xirochori 1" and jaw fragments from Nikiti , 100 kilometers east of Thessaloniki.

Features and habitat

Remains from the area below the skull have not yet been discovered.

Based on the fossil teeth and jaw fragments, Ouranopithecus macedoniensis was described as a large primate, comparable to the female gorillas , which had a pronounced sexual dimorphism . A characteristic feature of its teeth are the relatively small canines of the upper jaw, which protrude slightly beyond the neighboring incisors and molars. Furthermore, no tooth gaps ( diastemata ) can be detected in the lower jaw , on which the long upper canines of other primate species are sharpened by constant abrasion (so-called honing ).

The assignment to the genus Ouranopithecus , which was newly established in 1977 , was mainly differentiated from Dryopithecus as well as Proconsul and Hispanopithecus ; closely related are the genera Sivapithecus , Bodvapithecus , Ramapithecus and Gigantopithecus .

The habitat of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis was reconstructed in 2007 on the basis of fossils of the same age - mainly from the group of cattle and horses - and with reference to earlier publications on abrasion on the teeth of Ouranopithecus .

Thus, it was an open grass and bush land with few trees in which the individuals of the kind of roots, tubers and grasses is malnourished, compared to today in Ethiopia living hamadryas baboons . The presumably quite hard fibrous food was considered as a possible cause of morphological similarities with some species of australopithecines - especially with Paranthropus .

Web links

Commons : Ouranopithecus macedoniensis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b George D. Koufos: Potential Hominoid Ancestors for Hominidae. In: Winfried Henke and Ian Tattersall , Handbook of Paleoanthropology, Vol. 3. Springer Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg 2007, p. 1365, ISBN 978-3-540-32474-4 , DOI: 10.1007 / 978-3-540-33761- 4_44
  2. ↑ Louis de Bonis , George D. Koufos: Phylogenetic Relationships of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis (Mammalia, Primates, Hominoidea) of the Late Miocene Deposits of Central Macedonia (Greece). In: Louis de Bonis et al. (Ed.): Hominoid Evolution and Climate Change in Europe, Vol. 2: Phylogeny of the Neogene Hominoid Primates of Eurasia. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2001, ISBN 0-521-66075-0 , pp. 254-268
  3. ↑ Erksin Savas Güleç, Ayla Sevim, Cesur Pehlevan and Ferhat Kaya: A new great ape from the late Miocene of Turkey. In: Anthropological Science. Volume 115, No. 2, 2007, pp. 153-158, doi : 10.1537 / ase.070501
  4. ↑ Louis de Bonis, Jean Melentis: Un nouveau genre de Primate hominoïde dans le Vallésien [Miocène supérieur] de Macédoine. In: Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris. Volume 284, No. 15 [Série D], 1977, p. 1396, note 6.
  5. ↑ David W. Cameron: Hominid - Adaptations and Extinctions. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2004, p. 163, ISBN 0-86840-716-X /
  6. ↑ GHR von Koenigswald: A lower jaw of a fossil hominoid from the Lower Pliocene of Greece. In: Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Series B. Volume 75, 1972, pp. 385-394
  7. ↑ a b Tanya M. Smith et al .: An examination of dental development in Graecopithecus freybergi (= Ouranopithecus macedoniensis). In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 46, No. 5, 2004, pp. 551–577, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2004.01.006 , full text (PDF; 2.4 MB)
  8. ↑ Winfried Henke , Hartmut Rothe : Stammesgeschichte des Menschen. An introduction. Springer Verlag, Berlin 1999, p. 57, ISBN 3-540-64831-3
  9. ↑ Further suggestions for names in the specialist literature for these fossils were: Graecopithecus macedoniensis and Sivapithecus macedoniensis .
  10. ↑ Jochen Fuss, Nikolai Spassov, David R. Begun and Madelaine Böhme : Potential hominin affinities of Graecopithecus from the Late Miocene of Europe. In: PLoS ONE. Volume 12, No. 5, 2017, e0177127, doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0177127
  11. ↑ George D. Koufosa and Louis de Bonis: The Late Miocene hominoids Ouranopithecus and Graecopithecus. Implications about their relationships and taxonomy. In: Annales de Paléontologie. Volume 91, No. 3, 2005, pp. 227-240, doi: 10.1016 / j.annpal.2005.05.001
  12. ^ A b David W. Cameron: The taxonomic status of Graecopithecus. In: Primates. Volume 38, No. 3, 1997, pp. 293-302, doi: 10.1007 / BF02381616
  13. ↑ Louis de Bonis, Geneviève Bouvrain, Denis Geraads and Jean Melentis: Première découverte d'un Primate hominoïde dans le Miocène supérieur de Macédoine (Grèce). In: Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des sciences Paris. Volume 278, Series D, 1974, pp. 3063-3066
  14. ^ EL Simons , D. Pilbeam : Preliminary revisions of the Dryopithecinae (Pongidae, Anthropoidea). In: Folia Primatologia. Volume 3, 1965, pp. 81-152
  15. ↑ a b Louis de Bonis, Jean Melentis: Un nouveau genre de Primate hominoïde dans le Vallésien (Miocène supérieur) de Macédoine. In: Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Paris. Volume 284, No. 15 (Series D), 1977, pp. 1393-1396
  16. ↑ Louis de Bonis et al .: New hominid skull material from the late Miocene of Macedonia in Northern Greece. In: Nature . Volume 345, 1990, pp. 712-714, doi: 10.1038 / 345712a0
  17. ↑ George D. Koufos: Mandible of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis (Hominidae, primates) from a new late Miocene locality of Macedonia (Greece). In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 91, No. 2, 1993, pp. 225-234, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330910208
  18. ↑ George D. Koufos: The first female maxilla of the hominoid Ouranopithecus macedoniensis from the late Miocene of Macedonia, Greece. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 29, No. 4, 1995, pp. 385-389, doi: 10.1006 / jhev.1995.1064
  19. ↑ Gildas Merceron et al .: Dental microwear analysis of bovids from the Vallesian (late Miocene) of Axios Valley in Greece: reconstruction of the habitat of Ouranopithecus macedoniensis (Primates, Hominoidea). In: Geodiversitas. Volume 29, No. 3, 2007, pp. 421–433, full text (PDF; 2.2 MB)
  20. ↑ Daniel Demiguel, David M. Alba and Salvador Moyà-Solà: Dietary Specialization during the evolution of Western Eurasian hominoids and the Extinction of European Great Apes. In: PLoS ONE. 9 (5): e97442, 2014, doi: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0097442