researcher studying monkey fossils unearthed in Peru have notice a prominent resemblance between their newly key out , squirrel - sized South American species and primitive African monkeys . The fossilized molars , describedinNaturethis calendar week , also stretch the South American prelate fossil book by about 10 million years .
New World monkeys are a group of primate that currently live in Central and South America , but where they add up from and when they arrived have always been a mystery . After all , South America was an island continent for trillion of years . It ’s potential that monkeys , rodents , and such made the long transatlantic journeying from Africa , but there ’s no dodo evidence to stick out that idea .
Now , a team lead byKenneth Campbell Jr. from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Countyhave reveal three dodo tooth — two uncompleted upper molars and one complete lower grinder — in the Peruvian Amazon during the course of multiple trips beginning in 2010 . “ Fossils are scarce and limited to only a few exposed banks along rivers during the dry season , ” Campbell explain in anews release . “ For much of the yr mellow water levels make paleontological exploration unimaginable . ”
Until now , the oldest fossils of New World scamp — which were uncovered in Salla , Bolivia — appointment back 26 million years , in the late Oligocene . These new dodo tooth are 10 million days older , date stamp back to the belated Eocene epoch and reach them the quondam dodo platter of New World monkeys known . That also means monkeys first arrived in South America at least 36 million year ago .
The team named this newfangled little , nonextant primatePerupithecus ucayaliensis . The genus name aggregate Peru with “ pithecus , ” which is Greek for scamp , and the mintage name refers to the Ucayali Department of Santa Rosa where it was found .
According to their analyses , these three novel nonextant monkey do n’t really resemble any South American hierarch , animation or out . However , the teeth ofPerupithecusbear a prominent resemblance to Eocene African primates , suggest that monkeys did in reality handle to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Africa .
