Science & Technology

Paleontologists Discover Most Primitive Primate Skeleton

Sargis with a skull from the skeleton of Ptilocercus lowii, the pen-tailed tree shrew. Ptilocercus is a very primitive tree shrew, a “living fossil,” that was critical to the current study, and similar to Dryomomys szalayi in many ways. The Yale Peabody Museum specimen is 1 of only 7 skeletons of this animal in the world. The origins and earliest branches of primate evolution are clearer and more ancient by 10 million years than previous studies estimated, according to a study featured on the cover of the Jan. 23 print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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