Thaindian News

May 12, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): The investigators have unearthed the calcified remnants of a primate that may have existed in Africa as long as a gigantic 37 million years ago. Nevertheless, it has resisted categorization as to which species it belonged.

The primate’s teeth, discovered in northern Egypt, have resisted and complicated the endeavors of the scientists to pigeonhole it. This is because the teeth do not precisely appear like those of any other primate group that was present at the time this newly unearthed species did.

The new species, named Nosmips Aenigmaticus, seems to have had a bizarre amalgamation of engorged and stretched out premolars with uncomplicated upper molars. This information has been divulged by the scientists analyzing the set of 12 fossilized teeth.

Erik Seiffert is the lead researcher and assistant professor of Anatomical Sciences of New York’s Stony Brook University. He has verbalized that it comes as a bit of an astonishment to come across a primate that resists categorization.

Seiffert divulged that Nosmips seems to be an exceedingly specific constituent of a formerly undocumented and, most probably, of a rather antique, widespread and African primate ancestry.

The examiners have observed that Nosmips existed alongside another specific primate named Afradapis. Seiffert and his collaborators equated the teeth of these vanished species with those of breathing primates. They established that Afradapis had adjustments for eating leaves, whereas Nosmips, almost certainly, wolfed more fruits and insects.