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Earliest known Old World monkey skull

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Abstract

Similarities of the skull are commonly used to support hypotheses of ancestor–descendant relationships between fossil and living ape genera, especially between the late Miocene apes Sivapithecus and Dryopithecus from Eurasia and the living orang-utan (Pongo) from Borneo and Sumatra1,2,3,4. Yet determining whether craniofacial traits shared by extant and Miocene apes are primitive or derived is severely hampered by the rarity of well-preserved fossil crania, particularly of early members of their closest outgroup, the Old World monkeys (Cercopithecoidea). The discovery of a complete and undistorted skull of Victoriapithecus at middle Miocene deposits from Maboko Island, Kenya, provides evidence of intact cranial-vault and basicranial morphology, brain size and craniofacial hafting for a primate from between 32 and 7 million years ago. Victoriapithecus represents a branch of Old World monkey that is intermediate between extant cercopithecids (Colobinae and Cercopithecinae) and the common ancestor they shared with apes (Hominoidea)5,6,7,8. The skull preserves traits widely thought to be derived for extant and fossil members of a proposed Sivapithecus/Pongo clade, but which now appear to be primitive features of ancestral Old World higher primates in general.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: Victoriapithecus shares a tubular ectotympanic with modern catarrhines17 (node A).
Figure 3: Bivariate plot of log10-transformed mean brain and body weight data for extant hominoids (H), cercopithecoids (C), platyrrhines.

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Acknowledgements

Excavations at Maboko were conducted with permission of the Office of the President, Republic of Kenya and in collaboration with the National Museums of Kenya. We thank the field crew (especially B. Onyango, V. Oluoch and S. Gitau) and M. G. Leakey for assistance, and E. Delson, M. Kohler, S. Moya-Sola and D. Pilbeam for comments and advice. This work was supported by NSF, L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, National Geographic Society, Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Fulbright, and Boise Fund.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 62901, Illinois, USA

    Brenda R. Benefit & Monte L. McCrossin

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  1. Brenda R. Benefit
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  2. Monte L. McCrossin
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Correspondence to Brenda R. Benefit.

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Benefit, B., McCrossin, M. Earliest known Old World monkey skull. Nature 388, 368–371 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/41078

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