Palaeontological evidence for an Oligocene divergence between Old World monkeys and apes
@article{Stevens2013PalaeontologicalEF, title={Palaeontological evidence for an Oligocene divergence between Old World monkeys and apes}, author={Nancy J. Stevens and Erik R. Seiffert and Patrick M. O’Connor and Eric M. Roberts and Mark D. Schmitz and Cornelia Krause and Eric Gorscak and Sifa Ngasala and Tobin L Hieronymus and Joseph Temu}, journal={Nature}, year={2013}, volume={497}, pages={611-614} }
Apes and Old World monkeys are prominent components of modern African and Asian ecosystems, yet the earliest phases of their evolutionary history have remained largely undocumented. The absence of crown catarrhine fossils older than ∼20 million years (Myr) has stood in stark contrast to molecular divergence estimates of ∼25–30 Myr for the split between Cercopithecoidea (Old World monkeys) and Hominoidea (apes), implying long ghost lineages for both clades. Here we describe the oldest known…
153 Citations
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