Latest Catarrhini Stories

Fossils unveiled on Wednesday reveal that the last ancestor shared by monkeys and humans lived most likely between 24 and 28 million years ago, which is several million years later than previously assumed. A partial skull of an unknown species was found in western Saudi Arabia that rewrites the timeline of primate evolution and fills in a vast gap in the fossil record, researchers said. Previous genome-based analysis put the split between hominoids (apes and humans) and cercopithecoids (Old...

Catalan researchers have discovered in the rubbish dump of Can Mata in the Vallès-Penedès basin (Catalonia) a new species of Pliopithecus primate, considered an extinct family of primitive Catarrhini primates (or "Old World monkeys"). The fragments of jaw and molars found in this large site demonstrate that Pliopithecus canmatensis belongs to this group, which includes the first Catarrhini that dispersed from Africa to Eurasia. Named Pliopithecus canmatensis, in honour of the...