Word: aegyptopithecus
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...Africa some 20 million years ago. But who, or what, preceded it? As far back as 1963, Simons, then at Yale, began uncovering in the wind-scoured Fayum desert region, southwest of Cairo, bones of a likely candidate: a small, fox-sized, tree-inhabiting primate, which he dubbed Aegyptopithecus (Egyptian Ape), that lived some 28 million to 30 million years ago. Returning there last fall, Simons and a colleague from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, John Fleagle, discovered the latest pieces in the jigsaw puzzle, four fragments of humeri, or upper-arm bones. Until...
...skull of the ape, named Aegyptopithecus zeuxis (for "linking Egyptian ape"), was found protruding from rock during a 1966 Yale expedition to the Fayum desert. But it was not until the specimen had been returned to Yale and extracted from its rock casement that Simons realized that it was an un usually complete skull of a primate, lacking only portions of its top and bottom and four incisor teeth. "Not only is the skull some eight to ten million years older than any other fossils related to man," Simons said, "but it is better preserved than any that are older...
Scientists established the age of the ancient skull by using the potassium argon method of dating an overlying lava flow, which is apparently 26 million years old. The location of the skull, 300 ft. below, indicated that it was about 2,000,000 years older. Aegyptopithecus, Simons believes, "stands near the very base of the genealogical tree leading to later Great Apes and man. It represents a major stage in the documentation of the forerunners...