Paidopithex
| Paidopithex | ||||||||||||
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Copy of the holotype (right thigh bone) in the Paleontological Museum in Tübingen |
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| Upper Miocene ( Tortonian ) | ||||||||||||
| 10 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Paidopithex | ||||||||||||
| Pohlig , 1895 | ||||||||||||
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Paidopithex ( Syn .: Pliohylobates ) is a fossil genus of Old World monkeys from the Upper Miocene of Rheinhessen (Rhineland-Palatinate). The only species described so far is Paidopithex rhenanus .
history
The holotype of the genus and also of the species Paidopithex rhenanus , an approximately 28 centimeter long thigh bone (femur), was discovered in 1820 in a sand pit near Eppelsheim (today the district of Alzey-Worms) in Rheinhessen (today Rhineland-Palatinate) and sent to Ernst Schleiermacher from the Grand Ducal "Naturaliencabinet" (the forerunner of today's Hessian State Museum ) handed over to Darmstadt for assessment. He sent casts and drawings of the femur, which he considered human, to the important French naturalist Georges Cuvier , but apparently never received an evaluation of the find from him.
It was only 41 years after its discovery that the Eppelsheim femur was introduced into scientific literature by the Darmstadt paleontologist Johann Jakob Kaup . Kaup assigned the bones to the genus and species Dryopithecus fontani, newly established by Edouard Lartet in 1856 for primate fossils from the Miocene of the northern foothills of the Pyrenees . However, he used the name " Hylobates fontani " which he followed the famous British paleontologist Richard Owen , who was convinced that Dryopithecus is identical to the recent gibbons (at the time all united in the genus Hylobates ). The Dutchman Eugène Dubois expressed a similar view when he established the new genus and species Pliohylobates eppelsheimensis for the Eppelsheim femur in a lecture to the Belgian Society for Geology, Paleontology and Hydrology on October 29, 1895 . Today, however, the name Paidopithex rhenanus, suggested by the Bonn paleontologist Hans Pohlig in the same lecture session, applies .
The original of the holotype is still kept in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt today. A copy of it is in the Dinotherium Museum in Eppelsheim.
The same site also yielded, apparently sometime between 1820 and 1861, a single maxillary canine (Caninus), which Kaup (1861) assigned to "an animal similar to Cercopithecus ". In 1935, the new species Semnopithecus eppelsheimensis was established for this tooth , which was later placed in the presumed Dryopithecine genus Rhenopithecus , which was again specially established .
Geological age
The holotype comes from about ten million years old ( Upper Miocene ), sandy deposits of the Ur-Rhine . These river sediments are known as dinotheria sands because they often contain teeth or bone fragments of the giant trunk animal Deinotherium (also Dinotherium ).
Systematics
Due to the sparse remains, the systematic assignment of Paidopithex is difficult. An affiliation were favored traditionally either the genus Dryopithecus that as a close extinct relative of the apes applies (Hominids) or even itself is an ape, or to the family Pliopithecidae for which also all extinct representatives a closer relationship to the Gibbons and at least one close relationship to the human (Hominoidea) is suspected. Kohler et al. (2002) rule out a very close relationship between this genus and Paidopithex after a detailed and for the first time possible investigation of thigh bones of Dryopithecus . They therefore give priority to the Pliopithecid hypothesis, but also consider that Paidopithex could represent a separate branch of the Old World monkeys .
literature
- Jens Lorenz Franzen: At the bottom of the original Rhine - excavations near Eppelsheim. Nature and museum. Vol. 130, No. 6, 2000, pp. 169-180
- Jens Sommer: Sedimentology, taphonomy and paleoecology of the Miocene Dinotheria sands from Eppelsheim / Rheinhessen. Dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree in natural sciences, Hannover-Langenhagen 2007
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Johann Jakob Kaup: Contributions to the closer knowledge of the primeval suckling animals. Fifth issue. Eduard Zernin, Darmstadt and Leipzig, 1861, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb10226113-5 , pp. 1–10
- ^ Eugène Dubois: Sur le Pithecanthropus erectus du Pliocène de Java. Bulletin de la Société Belge de Géologie, de Paléontologie et d'Hydrologie. Vol. 9, No. 1, Procès-verbaux, 1895, pp. 151-160 ( BHL ), p. 155
- ↑ Hans Pohlig: Paidopithex rhenanus , n. G .; n. sp., le Singe anthropomorphic du Pliocène rhénan. Bulletin de la Société Belge de Géologie, de Paléontologie et d'Hydrologie. Vol. 9, No. 1, Procès-verbaux, 1895, pp. 149–151 ( BHL )
- ^ P. Andrews, T. Harrison, E. Delson, RL Bernor, L. Martin: Distribution and biochronology of European and Southwest Asian Miocene Catarrhines. Pp. 168-207 in: Raymond L. Bernor, Volker Fahlbusch, Hans-Walter Mittmann (eds.): The Evolution of Western Eurasian Neogene Mammal Faunas. Columbia University Press, New York 1996, ISBN 978-0-2310-8246-4 (full chapter: ResearchGate ), p. 176; see also the literature cited therein
- ↑ Meike Köhler, David M. Alba, Salvador Moyà Solà, Laura MacLatchy: Taxonomic affinities of the Eppelsheim femur. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Vol. 119, No. 4, 2002, pp. 297-304. PMID 12448015 .