Oldest Primate Skeleton Unveiled
Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - 17:00
in Paleontology & Archaeology
The near-complete fossil of a tiny creature unearthed in China in 2002 has bolstered the idea that the anthropoid group of primates -- whose modern-day members include monkeys, apes and humans -- had appeared by at least 55 million years ago. The fossil primate does not belong to that lineage, however: it is thought to be the earliest-discovered ancestor of small tree-dwelling primates called tarsiers, showing that even at this early time, the tarsier and anthropoid groups had split apart. [More]