Palaeopropithecinae
| Palaeopropithecinae | ||||||||||||
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Palaeopropithecus ingens , drawing reconstruction of life |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Palaeopropithecinae | ||||||||||||
| Tattersall , 1973 |
The Palaeopropithecinae are an extinct group of primates that lived on Madagascar until around 500 to 1000 years ago . Today they are mostly classified as a subfamily of the Indriiformes (Indriidae), earlier they were considered a separate family as Palaeopropithecidae. They showed similarities with the sloths in their physique and probably also in their way of life and are sometimes referred to as " sloth-lemurs ".
The Palaeopropithecinae were medium to very large (10 to 200 kilograms) primates, they had a heavily built skull, they had only one lower incisor per half of the jaw. Your dental formula was 2-1-2-3 / 1-1-2-3, just like living in their closest relatives, the Indriartigen . The cusps of the molars, suitable for cutting, suggest that they mainly fed on leaves.
The limbs were strong, with the front legs being significantly longer than the back legs. From the musculoskeletal system one concludes that their posture and locomotion were suspensory , that is, like today's sloths, hanging downwards. Presumably her movements were slow and leisurely too.
The subfossil remains of these animals found were 1,000 to 8,000 years old, and they probably died out around 500 years ago at the latest. The main reason for their extinction was hunting. Their homeland, Madagascar, was only settled by humans around 1500 years ago, and the large, slow animals should have been easy targets for hunters. It is also possible that climatic changes (dry periods with the associated decline in forests) accelerated their decline. In Malagasy mysticism, there is an animal called the step-stepping , which may be traced back to a representative of this family.
Today four genera of the Palaeopropithecinae are known:
- Mesopropithecus was the smallest genus, weighing around 10 kilograms.
- Babakotia was a little heavier and weighed around 15 to 20 kilograms.
- Palaeopropithecus was significantly heavier at 40 to 60 kilograms and was probably the largest tree-dwelling genus in this group.
- Archaeoindris was the largest wet-nosed primate known to date, weighing up to 200 kilograms. Presumably, the genus mostly lived on the ground, it shows remarkable convergences to the ground-dwelling giant sloths of America.
literature
- Thomas Geissmann : Comparative Primatology. Springer-Verlag, Berlin et al. 2002, ISBN 3-540-43645-6 .
- Russell A. Mittermeier , Jörg U. Ganzhorn, William R. Konstant, Kenneth Glander, Ian Tattersall , Colin P. Groves , Anthony B. Rylands, Andreas Hapke, Jonah Ratsimbazafy, Mireya I. Mayor, Edward Louis jr, Yves Rumpler, Christoph Schwitzer, Rodin Rasoloarison: Lemur Diversity in Madagascar. In: International Journal of Primatology. 29, 2008, ISSN 0164-0291 , pp. 1607-1656.
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World. 6th edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 1999, ISBN 0-8018-5789-9 .