Researchers discover last common ancestor of apes and monkeys

July 16, 2010



Researchers have unearthed a new fossil that they think may be closely related to the common ancestor of  and, collectively known as  primates. Paleontologist Iyad Zalmout of the discovered the new species,  near  in ; the discovery gives new insights into.

The specimen, a partial skull, dates to the, approximately 29 to 28 million years ago, and exhibits puncture wounds from a large predator that may have killed it. Saadanius is thought to have been a tree-dweller and lived at a time when the had not yet split away from the African continent, forming the. The discovery may help resolve the dating of the split between Old World monkeys and apes. have traditionally dated the divergence to between 25 and 23 million years ago, based on early fossils of the two groups. Genetic studies, however, date it to between 30 to 35 million years ago.

Although Saadanius shares some features with living catarrhine primates, such as a bony ear tube, called an, it also possesses other features more common in the fossils of primitive or catarrhines, from which Old World monkeys and apes did not evolve. These basal features include a longer face and the lack of a.