BRIEF COMMUNICATION - NEW PRIMATE REMAINS FROM THE MIOCENE OF NAMIBIA, SOUTHERN AFRICA

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.