The upper jaw of the baby of Yuanmoupithecus. Credit: Terry Harrison, NYUs Department of Anthropology
The earliest gibbon fossil was discovered in southwest China.
The earliest gibbon fossil has actually been discovered by a group of researchers, filling a long-missing evolutionary space in the history of apes.
The research study, which was published in the Journal of Human Evolution, concentrates on the hylobatid household of apes, which consists of 20 species of living gibbons that are found throughout tropical Asia from northeastern India to Indonesia.
” Hylobatids fossil remains are extremely uncommon, and most specimens are separated teeth and fragmentary jaw bones found in cavern websites in southern China and southeast Asia dating back no greater than 2 million years back,” describes Terry Harrison, a teacher of anthropology at New York University and among the papers authors. “This new find extends the fossil record of hylobatids back to 7 to 8 million years back and, more particularly, enhances our understanding of the evolution of this household of apes.”
The fossil, found in the Yuanmou location of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, is of a small ape called Yuanmoupithecus xiaoyuan. The research studys analysis focused on the teeth and cranial specimens of Yuanmoupithecus, which included an upper jaw from a young child who was less than 2 years of ages at the time of its death.
An excavation near the village of Leilao in Yunnan, one of the areas where Yuanmoupithecus remains have actually been found. Credit: Terry Harrison, NYUs Department of Anthropology
Utilizing the size of the molar teeth as a guide, Yuanmoupithecus was approximated to be close in size to modern-day gibbons, with a body weight of roughly 6 kgs– or about 13 pounds.
” The teeth and the lower face of Yuanmoupithecus are extremely similar to those of modern-day gibbons, however in a couple of functions the fossil types was more primitive and indicate it being the ancestor of all the living species,” observes Harrison, part of NYUs Center for the Study of Human Origins.
Ji found the childs upper jaw throughout a field survey, and by comparing it with contemporary gibbon skulls kept at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, he had the ability to identify it as a hylobatid. In 2018, he invited Harrison and other colleagues to work on specimens gathered over the previous 30 years that were housed in the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Yuanmou Man Museum.
” The remains of Yuanmoupithecus are exceptionally uncommon, however with diligence, it has actually been possible to recuperate sufficient specimens to establish that the Yuanmou fossil ape is certainly a close relative of the living hylobatids,” notes Harrison.
The Journal of Human Evolution study likewise found that Kapi ramnagarensis, which has actually been declared to be an earlier species of hylobatid, based on a single isolated fossil molar from India, is not a hylobatid after all, but a member of a more primitive group of primates that are not carefully related to modern-day apes.
” Genetic studies indicate that the hylobatids diverged from the lineage leading to the primates and people about 17 to 22 million years earlier, so there is still a 10-million-year gap in the fossil record that needs to be filled,” Harrison warns. “With the continued expedition of promising fossil sites in China and in other places in Asia, it is hoped that extra discoveries will assist fill these vital spaces in the evolutionary history of hylobatids.”
Recommendation: “The earliest hylobatid from the Late Miocene of China” by Xueping Jia, Terry Harrison, Yingqi Zhang, Yun Wub, Chunxia Zhang, Jinming Hui, Dongdong Wua, Yemao Hou, Song Li, Guofu Wang and Zhenzhen Wang, 13 September 2022, Journal of Human Evolution.DOI: 10.1016/ j.jhevol.2022.103251.
The study was moneyed by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Yunnan Natural Sciences Foundation, and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences..
The scientists also got access to paleontological and skeletal collections at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., to name a few, in conducting their research study.