- Key People:
- Edward Tyson
- Related Topics:
- lemur
- flying lemur
- Amphipithecidae
- anthropoid
- prosimian
Information on primate evolution during the Oligocene Epoch (33.9 million to 23 million years ago) rests principally on discoveries in two areas—Texas and Egypt. The earliest platyrrhine fossils were found in South America and are only about 25 million years old, so much remains to be learned about their earliest evolutionary history.
Of unusual interest is the recent discovery of the cranium of a North American omomyid called Rooneyia; it is of particular note in view of a belief that primates had disappeared from North America by late Eocene times. Rooneyia is also of considerable interest in itself. The skull possesses a mixture of primitive and advanced features, precisely the combination that might be anticipated in a transitional form between lower and higher primates.
But by far the most important Oligocene site is Egypt. From the Fayum (al-Fayyūm) region of the Western Desert, from the Qasr El Sagha and Jebel Qatrani formations, has come the first evidence of the emerging Catarrhini. A number of different genera have been described from Fayum, including Catopithecus, Proteopithecus, Apidium, Qatrania, Propliopithecus, Oligopithecus, Parapithecus, and Aegyptopithecus. The first two of these, together with some other primates of uncertain affinities, are from the Sagha Formation, which, technically, is latest Eocene in age, but the deposits are continuous. Aegyptopithecus went on to give rise to living catarrhines (Old World monkeys and apes, whose ancestors did not separate until sometime between 29 million and 24 million years ago). The Fayum seems to depict the cradle of the catarrhines and possibly of the New World monkeys too, since some authors consider the family Parapithecidae (containing Parapithecus, Apidium, and Qatrania) to be closer to the platyrrhines. The other genera represent structural common ancestors of the Catarrhini, which indicates that the catarrhines and platyrrhines had by now become separate, whereas the two modern groups of catarrhines (cercopithecoids and hominoids) had not. From the evidence provided by the Fayum primate fauna, it is evident that quadrupedalism was becoming established as the typical locomotor pattern and that vertical clinging and leaping, the characteristic gait of the Eocene forebears of the fauna, was no longer retained by the genera represented at this site.