HONG KONG: Scientists have dated a species of fossil monkey, roughly the size of a small cat, from the Caribbean region to just over one million-year old. The discovery was made after some international researchers recovered a fossil tibia (shin bone) belonging to the species of extinct monkey Antillothrix bernensis from an underwater cave in Altagracia province, Dominican Republic, according to a statement by University of Melbourne.
The fossil was embedded in a limestone rock that was dated using the uranium-series technique. The researchers used three-dimensional geometric morphometrics to confirm that the fossil tibia does indeed belong to Antillothrix bernensis, a primate that existed on Hispaniola relatively unchanged for over a million years.
This monkey, roughly the size of a small cat, was tree-dwelling and lived largely on a diet of fruit and leaves. Helen Green of Melbourne University’s School of Earth Sciences, a lead researcher involved in the dating of the limestone surrounding the fossils, said the question of the age of primate fossils from this region has puzzled scientists since the days of Darwin and Wallace.
“The presence of endemic new world monkeys on the Caribbean islands is one of the great questions of bio-geography and our work on these fossils shows Antillothrix existed on Hispaniola relatively morphologically unchanged for over a million years,” Green said. “By establishing the age of these fossils we have changed the understanding of primate evolution in this region,” he added.
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