Teilhardina belgica is one of the earliest fossil primates ever recovered and the oldest fossil primate from Europe. As such, this taxon has often been hypothesized as a basal tarsiiform on the basis of its primitive dental formula with four premolars and a simplified molar cusp pattern. Until recently [see Rose et al.: Am J Phys Anthropol 146 (2011) 281–305; Gebo et al.: J Hum Evol 63 (2012) 205–218], little was known concerning its postcranial anatomy with the exception of its well-known tarsals. In this article, we describe additional postcranial elements for T. belgica and compare these with other tarsiiforms and with primitive adapiforms. The forelimb of T. belgica indicates an arboreal primate with prominent forearm musculature, good elbow rotational mobility, and a horizontal, rather than a vertical body posture. The lateral hand positions imply grasps adaptive for relatively large diameter supports given its small body size. The hand is long with very long fingers, especially the middle phalanges. The hindlimb indicates foot inversion capabilities, frequent leaping, arboreal quadrupedalism, climbing, and grasping. The long and well-muscled hallux can be coupled with long lateral phalanges to reconstruct a foot with long grasping digits. Our phyletic analysis indicates that we can identify several postcranial characteristics shared in common for stem primates as well as note several derived postcranial characters for Tarsiiformes.
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The Ypresian Cambay Shale Formation at Vastan, Mangrol, and Tadkeshwar lignite mines in Gujarat, western India, has yielded a rich vertebrate fauna including madtsoiid, palaeophiid, booid, and colubroideanlike snakes. The latter are particularly abundant, but their systematic affinities are difficult to resolve. Here we describe new specimens of the colubroidean-like snake Thaumastophis missiaeni, including anterior, middle, and posterior trunk vertebrae, as well as caudal vertebrae. The combination of primitive and derived caenophidian and colubroidean vertebral characters confirms Thaumastophis as the earliest known stem-colubriform snake while Procerophis, from the same beds, is more derived and considered to represent a crown-Colubriformes. Additionally, Thaumastophis shares with Renenutet enmerwer from the late Eocene of Egypt a unique combination of vertebral characters that suggests an exchange with North Africa was possible along the southern margin of the Neotethys. We erect the new family Thaumastophiidae for Thaumastophis and Renenutet on the basis of their shared derived vertebral morphology.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2021
Adulis, located on the Red Sea coast in present-day Eritrea, was a bustling trading centre between the first and seventh centuries CE. Several classical geographers—Agatharchides of Cnidus, Pliny the Elder, Strabo—noted the value of Adulis to Greco-Roman Egypt, particularly as an emporium for living animals, including baboons (Papio spp.). Though fragmentary, these accounts predict the Adulite origins of mummified baboons in Ptolemaic catacombs, while inviting questions on the geoprovenance of older (Late Period) baboons recovered from Gabbanat el-Qurud (‘Valley of the Monkeys’), Egypt. Dated to ca. 800–540 BCE, these animals could extend the antiquity of Egyptian–Adulite trade by as much as five centuries. Previously, Dominy et al. (2020) used stable isotope analysis to show that two New Kingdom specimens of Papio hamadryas originate from the Horn of Africa. Here, we report the complete mitochondrial genomes from a mummified baboon from Gabbanat el-Qurud and 14 museum specimens with known provenance together with published georeferenced mitochondrial sequence data. Phylogenetic assignment connects the mummified baboon to modern populations of P. hamadryas in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and eastern Sudan. This result, assuming geographical stability of phylogenetic clades, corroborates Greco-Roman historiographies by pointing toward present-day Eritrea, and by extension Adulis, as a source of baboons for Late Period Egyptians. It also establishes geographic continuity with baboons from the fabled Land of Punt (Dominy et al., 2020), giving weight to speculation that Punt and Adulis were essentially the same trading centres separated by a thousand years of history.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2023
