Gc. Conroy et al., BRIEF COMMUNICATION - NEW PRIMATE REMAINS FROM THE MIOCENE OF NAMIBIA, SOUTHERN AFRICA, American journal of physical anthropology, 99(3), 1996, pp. 487-492
Miocene primates from southern Africa are extremely rare, For this rea
son we wish to place on record several interesting new fossil primate
specimens recently recovered from the Miocene sites of Berg Aukas and
Harasib in the Otavi Mountain region of northern Namibia. The new find
s consist of a virtually complete atlas vertebra from Berg Aukas attri
butable to the hominoid Otavipithecus namibiensis and two teeth and fo
ur postcranial fragments from Harasib referrable to Cercopithecoidea.
The atlas vertebra exhibits anatomical characteristics intermediate be
tween those of modern cercopithecoids and hominoids which may be indic
ative of a transition from pronograde to orthograde postures. The cerc
opithecoid remains show that the earliest Old World monkeys known from
southern Africa were small, approximately the size of vervet monkeys.
These new specimens are important because they provide the first evid
ence relating to possible positional behaviors of Otavipithecus and th
e earliest fossil record of cercopithecoids from southern Africa. (C)
1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.