A New Origin for Hominoidea?

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Watch out, *Proconsul*, you and your kind may not be so homocentric as
once thought ... A new study may switch Proconsulidae and
*Aegyptopithecus* at the base of Hominoidea, and the origin of hominoids.
The other will be a stem-catarrhine, a status both have shared at one
point ... and may yet again. It all depends on the nose....

  Rossie, J.B.; Simons, E.L.; Gauld, S.C.; and Rasmussen, D.T. 2002.
Paranasal sinus anatomy of *Aegyptopithecus*: Implications for hominoid
origins. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA_ 99 (12):
8454-845.

Abstract:

  "The East African Early Miocene apes, or proconsulids, have often been
considered to be among the earliest members of the Hominoidea, as defined
by the divergence of the Cercopithecoidea, but this hypothesis is only
weakly supported by available fossil evidence. The ethmofrontal sinus is
one of a few morphological features that may link proconsulids with later
hominoids. Here we present direct evidence of an ethmofrontal sinus in an
early Oligocene stem catarrhine, Aegyptopithecus zeuxis. The presence of
this sinus in Aegyptopithecus suggests that its presence in proconsulids
is most likely to be a retained primitive condition. The morphological
evidence bearing on proconsulids' purported hominoid affinities is further
weakened by this conclusion, and alternative phylogenetic possibilities,
such as the placement of proconsulids as stem catarrhines are considered
more likely."

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  Cheers,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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