New primate could last link between gibbons and humans – The Universal

A new primate , who have called Pliobates Cataloniae , discovered by researchers at the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont, might have been the last common ancestor between gibbons, and great apes and humans.

The director of the Institut, Salvador Moya-Sola, and principal investigator of the study, David Alba, highlighted by presenting the finding that the discovery was made from a skeleton 11.6 million years found in the paleontological site of Can Mata (northeastern Spain), the most important fossil primates the middle Miocene Eurasian continent.

The remains of this new primate, 70 bones of the skull and other leg and left arm, corresponding to an adult female to paleontologists have dubbed “ Laia “, weighing about 4 to 5 kilos, fed soft fruits and climbed and hung in the tops of the trees.

The skull Pliobates Cataloniae has been reconstructed virtually high resolution scanners and the remains of the extremities it has been seen that Laia has some primitive features , as the anatomy of the arm, the joint between the humerus and radius, and the bones of the wrist, having the basic design of current hominoids.

The work of this team, published in Science , radically changes the hitherto accepted model on hilobátidos and ancestor of hominids, and provide very strong clues to the origin current gibbons.

According to Moya-Sola said the origin of gibbons is a mystery about the lack of fossil record, but until now most scientists thought their last common ancestor with hominids should be large, about 40 kilos, since all the undoubted fossil hominids were found so far.

David Laia Alba said that might have been the last common ancestor of all apes and big and small human, within the group of primates, and is characterized by having no external tail.

Laia is noted that the species 17 million years ago did they separated the one hand gibbons (hilobátidos ), and on the other hominids (great apes and humans), and is the first ape small form present in existing hominids, which has important implications to reconstruct the last common ancestor of both groups.

According to Alba, current hominoids are a group of primates that includes the small apes (gibbons and siamangs, which constitute the family of the hilobátidos) and great apes (orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees) that human form the family of hominids.

All current hominoids share the absence of external queue, a orthograde body design that enables them to an upright position of the trunk, and several cranial features.

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