Abstract
In the fossil record of the Upper Cretaceous there are traces of the mammalian groups that later diversified in the Tertiary. One of the most tantalizing of these precursors is the fossil of a single tooth that appears to have belonged to a very primitive representative of the line of vertebrates called primates. Humans are primates. The animal that owned the tooth is appropriately called Purgatorius, after Purgatory Hill in the Hell Creek Formation.
Keywords
Modern Human Southern Beech Mammuthus Primigenius Hell Creek Formation Australopithecus Africanus
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Further Reading
- Brain, C.K. & A. Sillen 1988. Evidence from the Swartkrans cave for the earliest use of fire. Nature 336,464–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Reader, J. &J. Gurche 1986. The rise of life: the first 3.5 billion years. New York: A.A. Knopf/London: Roxby.Google Scholar
- Simons, E.L. 1989. Human origins. Science 245, 1343–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Walker, A. & M. Teaford 1989. The hunt for Proconsul. Scientific American 260, 76–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copyright information
© Springer Netherlands 1991