Fossils recently discovered in Myanmar could prove that the common ancestors of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, rather than Africa, researchers contend in a study released on Wednesday.
However, other scientists said that the finding, while significant, won’t end the debate over the origin of anthropoids — the primate grouping that includes ancient species as well as modern humans.
The pieces of 38 million-year-old jawbones and teeth found near Bagan in central Myanmar in 2005 show typical characteristics of primates, said Chris Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and a member of the team that found the fossils.
“When we found it, we knew we had a new type of primate and basically what kind of primate it was,” Beard said in a telephone interview from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “It turns out that jaws and teeth are very diagnostic ... They are almost like fingerprints for fossils like this.”
The findings were published in the Proceedings of The Royal Society B, a London-based peer-reviewed journal.
Beard and his team from France, Thailand and Myanmar concluded that the fossils — which they dubbed Ganlea megacanina — came from 10 to 15 individuals of a new species that belonged to an extinct family of Asian anthropoid primates known as Amphipithecidae.
Wear and tear found on the canine teeth suggest the tree-dwelling, monkey-like creatures with long tails used their teeth to crack open tropical fruit to get to the pulp and seeds — behavior similar to modern South American saki monkeys that inhabit the Amazon basin, Beard said.
“Not only does Ganlea look like an anthropoid, but it was acting like an anthropoid 38 million years ago by having this feeding ecology that was quite specialized,” Beard said.
His team determined that the fossil was 38 million years old, making it several million years older than any anthropoid found in Africa and the second-oldest discovered in Asia.
In 1994, Beard and his Chinese colleagues found fossilized foot bones of the anthropoid Eosimias — one of the worlds smallest primates — which lived between 40 million and 45 million years ago and roamed ancient rain forest on the eastern coast of China.
Beard said the age of both fossils was the evidence he needed to challenge contentions that anthropoid primates had evolved in Africa, where Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old fossil, was discovered in 1974.
“This new fossil Ganlea definitely helps us argue — and we think the argument is pretty close to settled now — that when you go back this far in time, the common ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans was definitely in Asia, not in Africa,” Beard said.
In May, researchers unveiled a nearly intact skeleton of a 47 million-year-old primate — found in Germany and dubbed “Ida” — that they said provides a glimpse into how our distant ancestors may have looked.
“We wouldn’t claim Ganlea is [the] missing link, but we know Ganlea is much more closely related to our ancestors than Ida ever was — even though, unfortunately, we don’t have complete skeleton like they did for Ida,” he said.
Jorn Hurum, who brought Ida to the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, said that it was too early to draw conclusions from the Myanmar fossils because only jawbones and teeth were found.
“These fragments are still too few and far between,” Hurum said. “This is the kind of scientific debate that will continue until more complete skeletons like Ida has been found, and this may take several hundred years.”
John Fleagle, a Stony Brook University paleontologist, said the discovery of Ganlea is important because it shows how several different primates found in Myanmar are related and provides interesting suggestions about a unique dietary specialization.
But he said the Myanmar fossils do little to prove whether anthropoids evolved in Asia or Africa — or even whether Ganlea was an anthropoid or an early relative of lemurs.
“This doesn’t add anything new about whether anthropoids came from Africa or Asia or the broader evolutionary relationships of these particular primates,” Fleagle said.
“The definitive features that would resolve it in people’s mind would be in the skull,” he said. “Without a skull to demonstrate the distinctive anthropoid features of the eye and ear regions, scientists will still continue to debate whether the dental similarities just indicate similar diets or are the result of a common heritage.”
Beard isn’t letting the criticism slow him down. He and his team expect to return to Myanmar in November to continue searching for more fossils and exploring how anthropoids evolved in Asia and then migrated to Africa.
“The question is when and how did this big evolutionary shift occur from Asia to Africa,” Beard said. “That is something we are trying to establish. We have a team working in Myanmar which has ideas of places to go in Africa to try and pick up [the] thread there.”
Taiwan has lost Trump. Or so a former State Department official and lobbyist would have us believe. Writing for online outlet Domino Theory in an article titled “How Taiwan lost Trump,” Christian Whiton provides a litany of reasons that the William Lai (賴清德) and Donald Trump administrations have supposedly fallen out — and it’s all Lai’s fault. Although many of Whiton’s claims are misleading or ill-informed, the article is helpfully, if unintentionally, revealing of a key aspect of the MAGA worldview. Whiton complains of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s “inability to understand and relate to the New Right in America.” Many
US lobbyist Christian Whiton has published an update to his article, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” discussed on the editorial page on Sunday. His new article, titled “What Taiwan Should Do” refers to the three articles published in the Taipei Times, saying that none had offered a solution to the problems he identified. That is fair. The articles pushed back on points Whiton made that were felt partisan, misdirected or uninformed; in this response, he offers solutions of his own. While many are on point and he would find no disagreement here, the nuances of the political and historical complexities in
Taiwan is to hold a referendum on Saturday next week to decide whether the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, which was shut down in May after 40 years of service, should restart operations for as long as another 20 years. The referendum was proposed by the opposition Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and passed in the legislature with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Its question reads: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant should continue operations upon approval by the competent authority and confirmation that there are no safety concerns?” Supporters of the proposal argue that nuclear power
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this month raised its travel alert for China’s Guangdong Province to Level 2 “Alert,” advising travelers to take enhanced precautions amid a chikungunya outbreak in the region. More than 8,000 cases have been reported in the province since June. Chikungunya is caused by the chikungunya virus and transmitted to humans through bites from infected mosquitoes, most commonly Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. These species thrive in warm, humid climates and are also major vectors for dengue, Zika and yellow fever. The disease is characterized by high fever and severe, often incapacitating joint pain.
RSS