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According to a new study, a tiny fossilized molar nestled in the sweltering shrubs of the Tugen Hills in Kenya belonged to what might be the smallest monkey species ever discovered. The newly identified extinct species, Simiolus minutus, weighed only about 8 pounds, slightly less than the average dwelling cat.
Dwarf gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans today, the miniature monkey was perhaps a victim of natural selection, unable to compete with the colobine monkeys that dined on the same leaves in the trees about 12.5 million years ago.
"They were trying to do what the colobines were doing, which was silly because no one had the same equipment," said James Rossie, paleo-trimatologist at Stonybrook University in New York, referring to the digestive abilities of monkeys. "They brought a knife to a shootout and discovered that the knife was a plastic picnic knife."
Dr. Rossie discovered the tooth in 2004 with a colleague, Andrew Hill, from Yale University. Their discovery, published online recently in the Journal of Human Evolution, provides insight into one of the aspects of the arms race between monkeys and ancient monkeys in the middle and upper Miocene, there are some 6 to 14 million dinosaurs. # 39; years.
The reason why so many monkeys, including small-body apes like Simiolus, have disappeared is unclear. The dominant assumptions are that they have become extinct because of competition from apes and environmental changes. The echoes of everything that happened during this period are still felt today because there is only 20 species of monkeys, against more than 130 species of Old World monkeys in Africa and Asia. The destruction of habitat by humans, however, is now the main threat to the species of both groups of primates and the main reason why their numbers have declined in recent times.
When Dr. Rossie found the molar, he and Dr. Hill realized that it looked like two teeth in a museum collected in the 1970s and 1980s. Although they only had three teeth, Dr. Rossie stated that the teeth were sufficiently different from all that had been described, so the two men knew that they had a new species.
"It's a bit like finding a single Martian spacecraft crashed in the Arizona desert," said Dr. Rossie. "You do not have to find 12 to know what it means."
The molar was about 0.15 inches in diameter. From his teeth, Dr. Rossie was able to extrapolate the size of the new monkey's jaw size and body size, which were smaller than any living or known extinct species. The smallest living monkey is the Gibbon who weighs between 10 and 30 pounds.
By analyzing shear peaks on the molar, they determined that the species was at least one part-time folivore or leaf eater. Previously, they had identified fossils of a early colobine on the same site, which led them to suggest that the monkey and monkeys compete for food, opening a window to the larger fall of monkeys and the rise of monkeys.
"We now have a clear piece of the puzzle," said Dr. Rossie.
Dr. Rossie said this discovery, which had taken 14 years, was a bittersweet homage to his co-author and doctoral advisor, Dr. Hill, who had developed leukemia and died in September 2015.
"To be honest, there was a sense in which we had not made a lot of effort to finish it because working on it was a recurring reason to come together," said Dr. Rossie.
"It's sad to finish the last thing I'll do with him," he said, "but at the same time, it gives me great pride to have done this with him."
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