Abstract
It is widely understood that Hominoidea (apes and humans) and Cercopithecoidea (Old World monkeys) have a common ancestry as Catarrhini deeply rooted in Afro-Arabia1,2,3,4. The oldest stem Catarrhini in the fossil record are Propliopithecoidea, known from the late Eocene to early Oligocene epochs (roughly 35–30 Myr ago) of Egypt, Oman and possibly Angola5,6,7,8,9,10. Genome-based estimates for divergence of hominoids and cercopithecoids range into the early Oligocene11; however, the mid-to-late Oligocene interval from 30 to 23 Myr ago has yielded little fossil evidence documenting the morphology of the last common ancestor of hominoids and cercopithecoids, the timing of their divergence, or the relationship of early stem and crown catarrhines. Here we describe the partial cranium of a new medium-sized (about 15–20 kg) fossil catarrhine, Saadanius hijazensis, dated to 29–28 Myr ago. Comparative anatomy and cladistic analysis shows that Saadanius is an advanced stem catarrhine close to the base of the hominoid–cercopithecoid clade. Saadanius is important for assessing competing hypotheses about the ancestral morphotype for crown catarrhines1,12,13,14, early catarrhine phylogeny12,15 and the age of hominoid–cercopithecoid divergence11. Saadanius has a tubular ectotympanic but lacks synapomorphies of either group of crown Catarrhini, and we infer that the hominoid–cercopithecoid split happened later, between 29–28 and 24 Myr ago.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Saudi Geological Survey (Jeddah) officials Z. A. Nawab, A. M. Al Attas and A. F. Al Khattabi for the invitation to undertake fieldwork in western Saudi Arabia; E. Mbua (National Museums of Kenya) for permission to study of catarrhine fossils in her care; A. Walker for access to micro-CT facilities at Pennsylvania State University; T. Ryan for scanning; A. Rountrey, D. Erickson and B. Miljour for assistance with interpretation of micro-CT scans, photography, and figures; T. Harrison for phylogenetic discussion and advice; E. Seiffert for CT images and photographs of propliopithecoid fossils; B. Benefit for information on the ectotympanic of Victoriapithecus; D. T. Rasmussen and M. Gutiérrez for information about fossil mammals from Lothidok, Kenya; M. Halawani, A. Memesh, S. Dini, C. Spencer and G. W. Hughes for information about the geology and lithostratigraphy of the research area; and E. Seiffert for improving the manuscript. The research was supported by a US National Science Foundation grant (EAR-0517773) to P.D.G.
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I.S.Z., Y.A.A., M.A.A., A.H.N., A.M.A., S.A.A., A.O.N., A.H.M. and J.A.W. undertook the palaeontological survey, fossil collection and field geology. W.J.S. prepared the fossils. G.F.G., L.M.M. and W.J.S. performed the comparative study and phylogenetic analysis of catarrhine primates. L.M.M. and P.D.G. coordinated the micro-CT scanning. G.F.G. and W.J.S. made comparative studies of the non-primate mammalian fauna and identified the taxa. All authors contributed to the manuscript.
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Zalmout, I., Sanders, W., MacLatchy, L. et al. New Oligocene primate from Saudi Arabia and the divergence of apes and Old World monkeys. Nature 466, 360–364 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09094
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09094
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Marc Verhaegen
Congratuations with this wonderful fossil. Saadanius hijazensis is called "a land mammal found in what they thought was a fossil seabed" but I wonder whether it could indeed have been a seabed: can't it have lived in a coastal forest, like its possible descendant Heliopithecus (Afropithecus) leakeyi, the so-called Saudi Ape ten or twelve million years later? Saadanius is found amid paenungulates (today's elephants, seacows and hyraxes) and cetartiodactyls (anthracotheres), and there are morphological arguments from comparative biology that the early hominoids might have been coastal and flooded forest dwellers (e.g. google "aquarboreal").
Marc Verhaegen
Saadanius hijazensis seems to have lived in a mangrove area. Like other monkeys in flooded forests such as proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus), they might have found it necessary sometimes to swim to other trees surrounded by water. Catarrhini, as opposed to Platyrrhini, have slitlike nostrils close to one another, Saadanius' maxillary air sinuses would have helped to keep their long and narrow noses more easily above the water surface when they had to reach other trees in flooded forests. Could this be an answer to the question why Catarrhini have evolved narrow-nosed faces?
Shi Huang
This new paper on a common ancestor of ape-monkey from 29-28 million years ago fully supports the results of a novel molecular dating methodology (29.7 million years) on the divergence time of ape and monkey (Huang, 2010a). Dating results by others using completely different methodology are self-conflicting and either too late (23 MY) or too early (30-35 MY) (Steiper, 2004).
Existing molecular phylogeny methods are based on the neutral theory. But, in my opinion, the neutral theory should never have been invented in the first place for macroevolution if people had not overlooked the overlap feature of the genetic equidistance result that originally inspired the molecular clock and in turn the neutral theory (Huang, 2010b). Therefore, the existing interpretation of molecular phylogeny of macroevolution is based on false theory and cannot possibly be true. One simply cannot imagine that the field has been all along on the right track when a major mistake had been committed right from the start. Neither can one imagine that the field can continue business as usual now that the mistake has finally been caught after nearly half of a century. Essentially no conclusion or interpretation on macroevolution from the molecular evolution field in the past half of a century can be regarded as correct or conclusive.
Ref.
Huang, S. (2010a) Primate phylogeny: molecular evidence for a pongid clade excluding humans and a prosimian clade containing tarsiers. Submitted. Available from Nature Precedings
Steiper, M.E., Young, N.M., Sukarna, T.Y. (2004) Genomic data support the hominoid slowdown and an Early Oligocene estimate for the hominoid-cercopithecoid divergence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 101:17021-17026.
Huang, S. (2010b) The overlap feature of the genetic equidistance result, a fundamental biological phenomenon overlooked for nearly half of a century. Biological Theory 5: 40-52. http://www.mitpressjournals...