Monkeys reached Americas about 36 million years ago
Peruvian fossils suggest ancient African primates somehow crossed the ocean
By Bruce Bower
A handful of roughly 36-million-year-old fossil teeth unearthed in Peru have put new bite into the idea that ancient African monkeylike primates somehow reached South America and sparked the evolution of New World monkeys. Although scientists previously suspected that African animals got the primate ball rolling in the Americas, the Peruvian finds provide the first fossil backup for the scenario.
Two complete and two partial molar teeth excavated on a riverbank in Peru’s Amazon region represent the oldest known New World primates, says a team led by paleontologist Mariano Bond of the La Plata Museum in Argentina. The finds, from a species the authors dub Perupithecus ucayaliensis, closely resemble previously reported teeth of North African primates that lived between 39 million and 35 million years ago, the investigators report online February 4 in Nature.