Sep. 6, 2013 — A team of researchers has discovered the cranium of a fossil ape from Shuitangba, a Miocene site in Yunnan Province, China. The juvenile cranium of the fossil ape Lufengpithecus is significant, according to team member Nina Jablonski, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Penn State.
Jablonski noted that juvenile crania of apes and hominins are extremely rare in the fossil record, especially those of infants and young juveniles. This cranium is only the second relatively complete cranium of a young juvenile in the entire Miocene -- 23-25 million years ago -- record of fossil apes throughout the Old World, and both were discovered from the late Miocene of Yunnan Province.
The cranium is also noteworthy for its age. Shuitangba, the site from which it was recovered, at just over 6 million years old, dates to near the end of the Miocene, a time when apes had become extinct in most of Eurasia. Shuitangba has also produced remains of the fossil monkey,Mesopithecus, which represents the earliest occurrence of monkeys in East Asia.
Jablonski was co-author of a recent paper online in the Chinese Science Bulletin that described the discovery.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!