These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed


  • Title: The anthropoid status of a primate from the late middle Eocene Pondaung Formation (Central Myanmar): tarsal evidence.
    Author: Marivaux L, Chaimanee Y, Ducrocq S, Marandat B, Sudre J, Soe AN, Tun ST, Htoon W, Jaeger JJ.
    Journal: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A; 2003 Nov 11; 100(23):13173-8. PubMed ID: 14595009.
    Abstract:
    Primate dental and postcranial remains from the Eocene Pondaung Formation (Myanmar) have been the subject of considerable confusion since their initial discoveries, and their anthropoid status has been widely debated. We report here a well preserved primate talus discovered in the Segyauk locality near Mogaung that displays derived anatomical features typical of haplorhines, notably anthropoids, and lacks strepsirhine synapomorphies. Linear discriminant and parsimony analyses indicate that the talus from Myanmar is more similar structurally to those of living and extinct anthropoids than to those of adapiforms, and its overall osteological characteristics further point to arboreal quadrupedalism. Regressions of talar dimensions versus body mass in living primates indicate that this foot bone might have belonged to Amphipithecus. This evidence supports hypotheses favoring anthropoid affinities for the large-bodied primates from Pondaung and runs contrary to the hypothesis that Pondaungia and Amphipithecus are strepsirhine adapiforms.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]