Word: aegyptopithecus
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...beastly little primates were much more than that. They were probably the smartest, most advanced creatures of their day. Aegyptopithecus zeuxis (connecting ape of Egypt), which lived some 30 million years ago in what was then a lushly forested region in Egypt, has long been suspected of occupying a key position in the genealogy of higher primates, including man. Three years ago, Simons and his colleagues resumed their digging about 60 km (40 miles) southwest of Cairo, where he had found a single fossilized Aegyptopithecus skull in 1966. Last week they reported striking new evidence that the scrawny creature...
Judging from examination of its eye sockets, Aegyptopithecus, unlike some of its rivals, was a diurnal creature, one that was active mostly in daylight. This implies that Aegyptopithecus lived in groups, rather than by itself as do many nocturnal animals. It also means that there was probably extensive visual and vocal communication between the member animals. Such socialization would have put stresses on them, requiring them to be more assertive, courageous and competitive than if they had lived by themselves-which in turn could have fostered brain growth. Indeed, says Kay, Aegyptopithecus' cranial capacity of about...
When Simons began unearthing scattered Aegyptopithecus fragments in the 1960s, he could only speculate about the primate's place in the evolutionary past. From the latest group of fossils, he is convinced that it was the immediate forebear of Dryopithecus, a more advanced primate that first appeared in Africa 8 million years later; that was not long before the crucial split in the evolutionary tree that produced one branch leading to the apes, another to man. Simons is so sure of Aegyptopithecus' place in the evolutionary scheme that he has taken to calling the beast "the dawn...
...have given rise to both apes and man. This ape's own ancestors seem likely to have lived in Africa as well. As Exhibit A, Duke University Anthropologist Elwyn Simons offered fossils, found near Cairo, of a tree-dwelling primate 30 million years old; Simons christened the creature Aegyptopithecus. Last week, however, a team of Burmese and American scientists created a stir in anthropological circles when they announced that they had found primate fossils in Burma that may be 40 million years old. That could plant man's roots in Southeast Asia...
...weighed roughly 30 Ibs. and somewhat resembled a rhesus monkey in body form and size. Their diet was probably fruits and other vegetation. As Savage says: "They were a sort of monkey with apelike teeth, bouncing through the trees." They could thus emerge as an earlier common ancestor than Aegyptopithecus of both apes and monkeys, and as a link back to such lower primates as lemurs and tarsiers. That might put them very near the start of anthropoid evolution; Ciochon speculates that they may have migrated into Africa via western Asia to evolve into later ancestors of early...