Eocene primates of South America and the African origins of New World monkeys

BOND, M.; TEJEDOR, M.F.; CAMPBELL, K. JR.; CHORNOGUBSKY, L.; NOVO, N.; GOIN, F. J.

NATURE

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2015 vol. 520 p. 538 - 541

0028-0836

The platyrrhine primates, or New World monkeys, are immigrant mammals whose fossil record comes from Tertiary and Quaternary sediments of South America and the Caribbean Greater Antilles1,2. The time and place of platyrrhine origins are some of the most controversial issues in primate palaeontology, although an African Palaeogene ancestry has been presumed by most primatologists3,4. Until now, the oldest fossil records of New World monkeys have come from Salla, Bolivia5,6, and date to approximately 26 million years ago7, or the Late Oligocene epoch. Here we report the discovery of newprimates fromthe ?Late Eocene epoch ofAmazonianPeru, which extends the fossil record of primates in South America back approximately 10 million years. The new specimens are important for understanding the origin and early evolution of modern platyrrhine primates because they bear little resemblance to any extinct or living South American primate, but they do bear striking resemblances to Eocene African anthropoids, and our phylogenetic analysis suggests a relationship with African taxa. The discovery of these new primates brings the first appearance datum of caviomorph rodents andprimates in SouthAmerica back into close correspondence, but raises new questions about the timing and means of arrival of these two mammalian groups.