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Palaeoanthropology

Fossil muzzles and other puzzles

Nature volume 388, pages 327–328 (1997)Cite this article

Several attempts have been made to construct a reliable evolutionary framework that can both accommodate the increasing number of fossil catarrhine taxa and yet still permit the recognition of the earliest ‘stem’ members of extant Old World primates. The outcome, however, greatly depends upon the assessment of primitive (ancestral) and derived (modern) traits. No consensus has yet been achieved as to what, exactly, are the ancestral states for the common ancestor of monkeys and apes. According to the most commonly accepted hypothesis, the cranial morphology of large-eyed, round-headed and short-snouted primates, such as the hylobatids (the lesser apes — the gibbon and siamang) and colobines2, closely approximates to the primitive catarrhine pattern3. But some authors4 believe that the rather long-snouted Oligocene catarrhine Aegyptopithecus, best known from the Fayum of Egypt and dated to about 34Myr ago, provides a better model for the primitive condition.

It is in this context that Benefit and McCrossin's description of a beautifully preserved cranium of the middle Miocene Old World monkey Victoriapithecus, from Maboko Island, Kenya, promises to be of critical importance. The specimen is estimated to be roughly 15 Myr old; it is the only complete and undistorted catarrhine cranium known from between the middle Oligocene and late Miocene, and thus offers the first evidence of cranial morphology from this 25-Myr interval of time. This specimen may end the debate about the character states that are hypothesized to have existed in the common ancestor of monkeys and apes.

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Figure 1: Simplified evolutionary tree of fossil and living Old World primates (catarrhines).

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut de Paleontología M.Crusafont, c/Escola Industrial, 23, Sabadell, 08201, Barcelona, Spain

    Meike Köhler & Salvador Moyà-Solà

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  1. Meike Köhler
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  2. Salvador Moyà-Solà
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Köhler, M., Moyà-Solà, S. Fossil muzzles and other puzzles. Nature 388, 327–328 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/40973

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