Parvimico materdei gen. et sp. nov.: A new platyrrhine from the Early Miocene of the Amazon Basin, Peru.
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2019-09
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Three field seasons of exploration along the Río Alto Madre de Dios in Peruvian Amazonia have yielded a fauna of micromammals from a new locality AMD-45, at ∼12.8°S. So far we have identified the new primate described here as well as small caviomorph rodents, cenolestoid marsupials, interatheriid notoungulates, xenarthrans, fish, lizards and invertebrates. The site is in the Bala Formation as exposed where the river transects a syncline. U-Pb dates on detrital zircons constrain the locality's age at between 17.1 ± 0.7 Ma and 18.9 ± 0.7 Ma, making the fauna age-equivalent to that from the Pinturas Formation and the older parts of the Santa Cruz Formation of Patagonian Argentina (Santacrucian). The primate specimen is an unworn M1 of exceptionally small size (equivalent in size to the extant callitrichine, Callithrix jacchus, among the smallest living platyrrhines and the smallest Eocene-Early Miocene platyrrhine yet recorded). Despite its small size it is unlike extant callitrichines in having a prominent cingulum hypocone. Based on the moderate development of the buccal crests, this animal likely had a diet similar to that of frugivorous callitrichines, and distinctly different from the more similarly-sized gummivores, Cebuella and C. jacchus. The phyletic position of the new taxon is uncertain, especially given the autapomorphic character of the tooth as a whole. Nevertheless, its unusual morphology hints at a wholly original and hitherto unknown Amazonian fauna, and reinforces the impression of the geographic separation of the Amazonian tropics from the more geographically isolated southerly parts of the continent in Early Miocene times.
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Kay, Richard F, Lauren A Gonzales, Wout Salenbien, Jean-Noël Martinez, Siobhán B Cooke, Luis Angel Valdivia, Catherine Rigsby, Paul A Baker, et al. (2019). Parvimico materdei gen. et sp. nov.: A new platyrrhine from the Early Miocene of the Amazon Basin, Peru. Journal of human evolution, 134. p. 102628. 10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.05.016 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21364.
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Richard Frederick Kay
I have two areas of research:1) the evolution of primates in South America; and 2) the use of primate anatomy to reconstruct the phylogenetic history and adapations of living and extinct primates, especially Anthropoidea.
1) Evolution of primates and mammalian faunal evolution, especially in South America. For the past 30 years, I have been engaged in research in Argentina, Bolivia The Dominican Republic, Peru, and Colombia with three objectives:a) to reconstruct the evolutionary history and adaptive patterns of South America primates and other mammals; b) to establish a more precise geologic chronology for the mammalian faunas between the late Eocene and middle Miocene (between about 36 and about 15 million years ago); and c) to use anatomy and niche structure of modern mammals as a means to reconstruct the evolution of mammalian niche structure in the Neotropics.
2) Primate Anatomy. I am working to reconstruct the phylogeny of primates based (principally) on anatomical evidence; and to infer the adaptations of extinct primates based mainly on cranial and dental evidence.
Field activities
Current fieldwork is focused on the study of terrestrial biotic change in Patagonia through the 'mid-Miocene Climate Optimum' when global climate was moderate and the subtropical zone, with primates and other typically tropical vertebrates, extended their ranges up to 55 degrees of South latitude.
In this collaborative research undertaking with colleagues at University of Washington and Boise State University, the geochronology of the Santa Cruz Formation at in extreme southern Argentina is being refined using radiometric dating. Stratigraphically-controlled collections have been made of vertebrates and plant macro- and microfossils. Climate change and its impact on the biota is assessed 1) using biogeochemical analysis of stable isotopes in fossil mammalian tooth enamel; 2) by documenting changes in mammalian community structure (richness, origination and extinction rates, and ecological morphology); and 3) by documenting changes in vegetation and floral composition through the study of phytoliths. These three independent lines of evidence in a refined geochronologic framework will then be compared with similar evidence from continental sequences in the Northern Hemisphere and oceanic climatic records to improve our understanding of the timing and character of climatic change in continental high latitudes during this temporal interval.
A second field project project in its early stages is the study of the fossil vertebrates of the Amazon Basin. The latter is a collaborative effort of biologists and geologists across schools at Duke (Nicholas School) and among six North American universities. My role is to direct the vertebrate paleontology component of this project in Brazil and Amazonian Peru. The hope is to recover primates from the Oligocene through Early Miocene. New material will shed light on the phylogenetic status of African Paleogene anthropoids, one of which may be the platyrrhine sister-taxon. Also, new remains of fossil primates will help to refine hypotheses about the origins of the modern families and subfamilies of platyrrhines, all of which trace back to an Early Miocene (17-21 Ma) common ancestor. Finally, new fossil primates may further constrain the time of entry of platyrrhines into South America.
Paul A. Baker
For the past several years, I have been pursuing the goal of understanding climate change on time-scales from decades to millions of years. I am particularly interested in what forces natural climate variability, how past climates have influenced the ecology and diversity of organisms in the tropics, as well as how climate change and other human activities will affect the eventual fate of these organisms.
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