| Rangwapithecus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Jaw of Rangwapithecus gordoni | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Suborder: | Haplorhini |
| Infraorder: | Simiiformes |
| Family: | † Dendropithecidae |
| Subfamily: | † Nyanzapithecinae |
| Genus: | † Rangwapithecus Andrews, 1974 |
Rangwapithecus is an extinct genus of ape from the Early Miocene of Kenya. Late Miocene phalanges from Hungary have also been assigned to this genus, but were later reclassified as Dryopithecus . [1]
Rangwapithecus weighed approximately 15 kg (33 lb) and the size and shape of the ape's teeth indicate that it was a folivore. [2] An arboreal ape from the earliest Miocene [3] adapted to life in the rainforest, it is associated particularly with Mfangano Island [4] although the species previously inhabited a woodland-bushland environment. [5]
Rangwapithecus was sympatric with Proconsul , [6] and may be synonymous with both Proconsul gordoni and Proconsul vancouveringi. [7] It is also similar to another species[ vague ] found in Africa. [8] Rangwapithecus gordoni and P. africanus are similarly sized though they differ morphologically, and both are restricted to Koru and Songhur. [9]
Proconsul is an extinct genus of primates that existed from 21 to 14 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. Fossil remains are present in Eastern Africa including Kenya and Uganda. Four species have been classified to date: P. africanus, P. gitongai, P. major and P. meswae. The four species differ mainly in body size. Environmental reconstructions for the Early Miocene Proconsul sites are still tentative and range from forested environments to more open, arid grasslands.
Australopithecus anamensis is a hominin species that lived approximately between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago and is the oldest known Australopithecus species, living during the Plio-Pleistocene era.
Dryopithecus is a genus of extinct great apes from the middle–late Miocene boundary of Europe 12.5 to 11.1 million years ago (mya). Since its discovery in 1856, the genus has been subject to taxonomic turmoil, with numerous new species being described from single remains based on minute differences amongst each other, and the fragmentary nature of the holotype specimen makes differentiating remains difficult. There is currently only one uncontested species, the type species D. fontani, though there may be more. The genus is placed into the tribe Dryopithecini, which is either an offshoot of orangutans, African apes, or is its own separate branch.
The Omo remains are a collection of hominin bones discovered between 1967 and 1974 at the Omo Kibish sites near the Omo River, in Omo National Park in south-western Ethiopia. The bones were recovered by a scientific team from the Kenya National Museums directed by Richard Leakey and others. The remains from Kamoya's Hominid Site (KHS) were called Omo I and those from Paul I. Abell's Hominid Site (PHS) were called Omo II.
Afropithecus is a genus of Miocene hominoid with the sole species Afropithecus turkanensis, it was excavated from a small site near Lake Turkana called Kalodirr in northern Kenya in 1986 and named by Richard Leakey and Meave Leakey. The estimated age of Afropithecus is between 16 and 18 million years old, which was determined with radiometric dating techniques and the geological studies conducted by Broschetto and Brown from the University of Utah. In total there are 46 recovered specimens from Kalodirr relating to Afropithecus consisting of cranial, mandible, dentition and post-cranial remains. The type specimen of Afropithecus turkanensis is KNM-WK 16999.
Ekembo nyanzae, originally classed as a species of Proconsul, is a species of fossil primate first discovered by Louis Leakey on Rusinga Island in 1942, which he published in Nature in 1943. It is also known by the name Dryopithecus africanus. A joint publication of Wilfrid Le Gros Clark and Louis Leakey in 1951, "The Miocene Hominoidea of East Africa", first defines Proconsul nyanzae. In 1965 Simons and Pilbeam replaced Proconsul with Dryopithecus, using the same species names.
Ouranopithecus is a genus of extinct Eurasian great ape represented by two species, Ouranopithecus macedoniensis, a late Miocene hominoid from Greece and Ouranopithecus turkae, also from the late Miocene of Turkey.
OH 7, also nicknamed "Johnny's Child", is the type specimen of Homo habilis. The fossils were discovered on November 4, 1960 in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, by Jonathan and Mary Leakey. The remains are dated to approximately 1.75 million years, and consist of fragmented parts of a lower mandible, an isolated maxillary molar, two parietal bones, and twenty-one finger, hand, and wrist bones.
Proconsulidae is an early family of primates that lived during the Miocene epoch in Kenya, and was restricted to Africa. Members of the family have a mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics, so the placement in the ape superfamily Hominoidea is tentative; some scientists place Proconsulidae outside of Hominoidea in a separately superfamily Proconsuloidea, before the split of the apes and Old World monkeys.
David Pilbeam is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and curator of paleoanthropology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University.
Lufengpithecus is an extinct genus of ape in the subfamily Ponginae. It is known from thousands of dental remains and a few skulls and probably weighed about 50 kg (110 lb). It contains three species: L. lufengensis, L. hudienensis and L. keiyuanensis. Lufengpithecus lufengensis is from the Late Miocene found in China, named after the Lufeng site and dated around 6.2 Ma. It is the latest Miocene fossil ape that has been discovered in the entire world. Some researchers believe that genus Lufengpithecus could be an ancestor to African apes and hominids.
Kamoyapithecus was a primate that lived in Africa during the late Oligocene period, about 24.2-27.5 million years ago. First found in 1948 as part of a University of California, Berkeley expedition, it was at first thought to be under a form of Proconsul by C.T. Madden in 1980, but after a re-examination by Meave Leakey and associates later, the fossils were moved under a new genus Kamoyapithecus, named after the renowned fossil finder Kamoya Kimeu. The genus is represented by only one species, K. hamiltoni.
Nacholapithecus kerioi was an ape that lived 14-15 million years ago during the Middle Miocene. Fossils have been found in the Nachola formation in northern Kenya. The only member of the genus Nacholapithecus, it is thought to be a key genus in early hominid evolution. Similar in body plan to Proconsul, it had a long vertebral column with six lumbar vertebrae, no tail, a narrow torso, large upper limbs with mobile shoulder joints, and long feet.
Graecopithecus is an extinct species of hominid that lived in southeast Europe during the late Miocene around 7.2 million years ago. Originally identified by a single lower jaw bone bearing a molar tooth found in Pyrgos Vasilissis, Athens, Greece, in 1944, other tooth specimens were discovered from Azmaka quarry in Bulgaria in 2012. With only little and badly preserved materials to reveal its nature, it is considered as "the most poorly known European Miocene hominoids." The creature was popularly nicknamed 'El Graeco' by scientists.
The evolutionary history of the primates can be traced back 57-85/90 million years. One of the oldest known primate-like mammal species, Plesiadapis, came from North America; another, Archicebus, came from China. Other similar basal primates were widespread in Eurasia and Africa during the tropical conditions of the Paleocene and Eocene. Purgatorius is the genus of the four extinct species believed to be the earliest example of a primate or a proto-primate, a primatomorph precursor to the Plesiadapiformes, dating to as old as 66 million years ago.
Olduvai Hominid number 9 is a fossilized skull cap of an early hominin, found in LLK II, Olduvai Gorge by Louis S. B. Leakey in 1960. It is believed to be ca. 1.4 million years old. Its cranial capacity is estimated at than 1067 cm3, the largest value among all known African Homo erectus specimens. OH 9 is significant because the features it carried and its correlation to the species classification it resides in.
The phylogenetic split of Hominidae into the subfamilies Homininae and Ponginae is dated to the middle Miocene, roughly 18 to 14 million years ago. This split is also referenced as the "orangutan–human last common ancestor" by Jeffrey H. Schwartz, professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences, and John Grehan, director of science at the Buffalo Museum.
Ekembo is an early ape (hominoid) genus found in 17- to 20-million-year-old sediments from the Miocene epoch. Specimens have been found at sites around the ancient Kisingiri volcano in Kenya on Rusinga Island and Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria. The name Ekembo is Suba for "ape" or "monkey".
The Nyanzapithecinae or Nyanzapithecines are a subfamily of extinct Dendropithecidae as sister of Simiolus. The group contains Rangwapithecus, Turkanapithecus, Rukwapithecus, Oreopithecus, and Nyanzapithecus. In the following tree the internal structure of Nyanzapithecinae of Nengo et al. is followed.
