They should point out whether the ancient primate species had a greater kinship to lemurs or to tarsiers. But he argues that to confirm this, scientists need to find ankle bones. A paleontologist, Beard works at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Christopher Beard agrees with Samuels’ team that Ekgmowechashala is likely more related to the lemurs. It’s an island off of the East Coast of southern Africa. Other scientists think the now extinct North American primates were more closely related to lemurs. These small primates live on islands in Southeast Asia. Some researchers suspect Ekgmowechashala’s closest present-day relatives would have been tarsiers. But Samuels and his team “have laid out the evidence in more detail,” Seiffert now says. He suggested an Asian–North American primate connection back in 2007. The new fossils also are similar to a 32-million-year-old primate from Pakistan, which lies between the Middle East and India.Įrik Seiffert is a paleontologist at Stony Brook University in New York. Samuels says the new fossils appear to resemble those from a 34-million-year-old primate from Thailand, in Southeast Asia. That journey would have taken place some 6 million years after other North American primates had died out. The ancient primates probably crossed that “land bridge” around 29 million years ago, the researchers now say. Millions of years ago, land connected what is now Alaska and Russia. That let the scientists determine that the new fossils must be between 28.7 million and 27.9 million years old. The ages of those layers was already known. The scientists figured out the age of the fossils based on their position between layers of volcanic ash. Partial jaws and teeth of a related species had turned up at sites in South Dakota and Nebraska. All the fossils belong to a new species of Ekgmowechashala, the researchers say. A tooth and jaw fragment from the same species had been found there previously. This rock layer, or stratum, contains fossils from between 30 million and 18 million years ago. They found two complete teeth, two partial teeth and a jaw fragment.Īll came from rocky sediment at Oregon’s John Day Formation. He and his colleagues dug up the ancient primate bones between 2011 and early 2015. As a paleontologist, he studies ancient fossils. Joshua Samuels works for the National Park Service in Kimberly, Ore.
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