A Brief Historical Account of the Recent Decline in Geographic Distribution of the Barbary Macaque in North Africa

Abstract

Arambourg (1959) suggests that the history of the family Cercopithecidae in Europe dates from the Miocene era, and although considerable uncertainty still surrounds the exact interpretation of the fossil records, it appears that only two or three types of cercopithecoid monkeys had ranges extending through Europe in pre-Pleistocene times. Kurten (1968) suggests that the Italian fossil material Macaca florentina is ancestral to M. sylvanus, and if other European fossils dating from 1 to 0.5 million years ago (e.g., Episcopia, Koneprusy and Mosbach) are transitional forms, then it seems likely that essentially modern forms of M. sylvanus appeared in Europe during the middle Pleistocene era. Indeed, Owen’s (1865) middle Pleistocene M. pliocaenia is believed by many to be conspecific with the modern Barbary macaque (Simons, 1972). Other fossils assigned to the modern species date from the Halstenien interglacial phases (i.e., 400,000 to 230,000 years ago) (Kurten, 1968); these data led Simons (1972) to consider that the genus Macaca was European in origin. Quite recent discoveries of Pleistocene Macaca from Hoxne, Suffolk, England (Singer et al., 1982) lend strong support to the conclusion that a fossil macaque almost indistinguishable from modern M. sylvanus was extant in England and Europe by mid-Pleistocene times.