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Tooth pushes back modern monkeys’ first ancestor three million years

By Guest PostMarch 23, 2013Nature, Scienceancestor, andrew hill, anthropologists, baboons, basal african monkeys, central kenya, cercopithecid family, christopher c gilbert, city, clayton stephenson, family victoriapithecidae, great rift valley, hunter college, james b rossie, lineage, macaques, million years ago, modern african monkeys, monkey family tree, new york, old world monkey, sallye stephenson, schwartz family foundation, stony brook university, teeth, tugen hills, vervet monkeys, yale university

The ancestor of all modern African monkeys was alive 3 million years earlier than previously thought and coexisted with members of a now-extinct branch of the monkey family tree, according to new evidence from anthropologists.

“We pushed back the origin of modern monkeys by a huge chunk of time,” said anthropologist Andrew Hill of Yale University, the senior researcher on the project. “This means there are all sorts of things we can think about. You can start to look at animal interactions that might have taken place.” (more…)

Desert Footprints Reveal Ancient Origins of Elephants’ Social Lives

A cluster of ancient footprints in the Arabian desert offers the clearest evidence yet for the early origins of modern elephants’ social structure, according to a Yale-led research team.

Roughly seven million years old, the prints represent the movements of at least 14 prehistoric elephants through the inland desert of the Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi, anthropologists report in a paper published on Feb. 22 in Biology Letters. The research shows that early elephants exhibited social patterns typical of their modern descendants — herding by adult females and offspring, and solitary wandering by adult males. (more…)

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Tooth pushes back modern monkeys’ first ancestor three million years

Desert Footprints Reveal Ancient Origins of Elephants’ Social Lives