Fossilized remains of primates that lived 38 million years ago in the area that is now Burma suggest that the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved in Asia and not Africa, according to new research published by Britain’s Royal Society.
Christopher Beard, lead author of the study, told the US publication Discovery News that the common ancestor of today's humans, monkeys and apes "would have lived in Asia." The discovery of the remains, called Ganlea megacanina, points to a circuitous migration route for some early primates, which must have gone to Africa and then returned to Asia, the study suggests.
A major focus of recent paleoanthropological research has been to establish the origin of anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes and humans) from earlier and more primitive primates known as prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers and their extinct relatives).
Before the recent discoveries of Ganlea megacanina—not only in Burma, but also in China and Thailand—most scientists believed that anthropoids originated in Africa.
The 38-million-year-old fossils were excavated at multiple sites in central Burma. The name of the new species refers to a small village, Ganle, near the site where the fossils were first found, and the greatly enlarged canine teeth that distinguish the animal from closely related primates.
Heavy dental abrasion indicates that Ganlea megacanina used its enlarged canine teeth to pry open the hard exteriors of tough tropical fruits to extract the nutritious seeds contained inside.
"This unusual type of feeding adaptation has never been documented among prosimian primates, but is characteristic of modern South American saki monkeys that inhabit the Amazon Basin," said Beard, a paleontologist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a member of the international team of researchers behind the Burmese anthropoid findings.
"Ganlea shows that early Asian anthropoids had already assumed the modern ecological role of modern monkeys 38 million years ago," Beard said.
Ganlea and its closest relatives belong to an extinct family of Asian anthropoid primates known as the Amphipithecidae. Two other amphipithecids, Pondaungia and Myanmarpithecus, were previously discovered in Burma, while a third, named Siamopithecus, was found in Thailand.
A detailed analysis of their evolutionary relationships shows that amphipithecids are closely related to living anthropoids and that all of the Burmese amphipithecids evolved from a single common ancestor.
Ganlea megacanina fossils were first discovered in Burma in December 2005. The fieldwork is a long-term collaboration by scientists from several institutions in Burma; as well as the University of Poitiers and the University of Montpellier in France; Carnegie Museum of Natural History; and the Department of Mineral Resources in Bangkok.
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