Archicebus Achilles: Oldest Known Primate Discovered

The world’s oldest known fossil primate skeleton, unearthed from an ancient lake bed in central China’s Hubei Province, near the course of the modern Yangtze River, represents a previously unknown genus and species that has been named Archicebus achilles, according to the paper in Nature. The new fossil takes its name from the Greek arche (meaning beginning or first; the same root as archaeology) and the Greek kebos (meaning long-tailed monkey). The species name achilles (derived from the mythological Greek warrior Achilles) highlights the new fossil’s unusual ankle anatomy. read more

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