Texas Deposit Reveals Novel Primate Species

Fossils discovered at a site in West Texas reveal the existence of a previously-unknown primate species, that lived about 43 million years ago. This discovery could help experts develop better classifications of the way primates evolved from origins up to this point.

The new primate species has been named Mescalerolemur horneri. Early analysis of its fossils reveals that it lived during the Eocene Epoch, at a time when numerous mammal species appeared.

At that time, experts say, dinosaurs had only been extinct for 12 million years, and the world spent most of that time recovering from the effects of the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-T) extinction event.

The discovery was made by Chris Kirk, a physical anthropologist and associate professor in the University of Texas in Austin (UTA) Department of Anthropology. The fossilized remains were found in Devil’s Graveyard badlands, in West Texas.

Reconstructions of the ancient primate reveal that it resembled a small lemur, and that it was a member of the adapiforms extinct primate group. Interestingly, the animal was a lot more closely related to adapiforms in Eurasia and Africa, than to those in North America, where it was found.

This is made even more interesting by the fact that the extinct primate resemble another species found at the same location in 1973, called Mahgarita stevensi. It too bore closer resemblance to species in other parts of the world than to those in North America.

“These Texas primates are unlike any other Eocene primate community that has ever been found in terms of the species that are represented,” Kirk explains, quoted by Science Blog.

“The presence of both Mescalerolemur and Mahgarita, which are only found in the Big Bend region of Texas, comes after the more common adapiforms from the Eocene of North America had already become extinct,” the expert goes on to say.

“This is significant because it provides further evidence of faunal interchange between North America and East Asia during the Middle Eocene,” he adds. What this means is that the animals most likely discovered a landmass connecting the two areas of the world.

Details of the new investigation will appear in an article entitled “New adapiform primate of Old World affinities from the Devil’s Graveyard Formation of Texas,” which will be published in an upcoming issue of the scientific Journal of Human Evolution.