Athena Review Image Archive ™
Victoriapithecus macinessi skull
Skull of Victoriapithecus macinessi (Mus.Nat.Hist.Paris, cast)
Victoriapithecus macinnesi
was a Middle Miocene Old World Monkey (Cercopithecoid) known from a
single fossil of a male skull found near Lake Victoria in Kenya by Brenda Benefit.
This is the earliest Old World Monkey fossil found to date. It is
closely related to the extinct Prohylobates species.
The postcranial remains of V. macinnesi
indicate had an average body mass of around 7 kg (15 lb) and that it
was quadrepedal (i.e., walked on all fours). On the forelimbs, the
distal end of the humerus shows a narrow articulation and a deep ulnar
notch.
Victoriapithecus shares various craniofacial features with the Oligocene
catarrhine Aegyptopithecus zeuxis and early Miocene hominoid Afropithecus turkanensis.
One of the strongest points of similarity is the structure of the
frontal bone, part of a primitive trait complex related to small
brain size, which is also observable in Aegyptopithecus (Simons et al. 2007). Based on the single known skull fossil, the volume of the Victoriapithecus brain was 36 cm3.
Victoriapithecus has a moderately long, muzzle and midfacial region, a long and forward- tapering premaxilla, broad upper central incisors with long roots, and a deep cheek region relative to facial height (Benefit and McCrossin 1991)
It had a dental formula of 2:1:2:3 on both the upper and lower jaws. Its lower molars are bilophodont with low cusps. The canines show sexual dimorphism, with a large upper left canine in the extant male fossil skull.
References:
Benefit, B.R. and M.L. McCrossin, 1991. Ancestral facial morphology of Old World higher primates. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 88 (12): 5267–71.
Simons, E.L., E.R.. Seiffert, T.M. Ryan, and Y.Attia 2007. A remarkable female cranium of the early Oligocene anthropoid Aegyptopithecus zeuxis (Catarrhini, Propliopithecidae). Proc.Nat.Acad.Sci. 104, no. 21, pp.8731-8736.
Copyright © 1996-2020 Rust Family Foundation (All Rights Reserved).