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New discovered: World's smallest fossil monkey found in Amazon jungle

New discovered: World's smallest fossil monkey found in Amazon jungle

A team of Peruvian and American scientists have uncovered the 18-million-year-old remains of the smallest fossil monkey ever found. A fossilized tooth found in Peru's Amazon jungle has been identified as belonging to a new species of tiny monkey no heavier than a hamster. The specimen is important because it helps bridge a 15-million-year gap in the fossil record for New World monkeys, says a team led by Duke University and the National University of Piura in Peru.

The new fossil was unearthed from an exposed river bank along the Rio Alto Madre de Dios in southeastern Peru. There, researchers dug up chunks of sandstone and gravel, put them in bags, and hauled them away to be soaked in water and then strained through sieves to filter out the fossilized teeth, jaws, and bone fragments buried within.

The team searched through some 2,000 pounds of sediment containing hundreds of fossils of rodents, bats and other animals before they spotted the lone monkey tooth. "Primate fossils are as rare as hen's teeth," said first author Richard Kay, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke who has been doing paleontological research in South America for nearly four decades.

A single upper molar, the specimen was just "double the size of the head of a pin" and "could fall through a window screen," Kay said. Paleontologists can tell a lot from monkey teeth, particularly molars. Based on the tooth's relative size and shape, the researchers think the animal likely dined on energy-rich fruits and insects, and weighed in at less than half a pound-only slightly heavier than a baseball. Some of South America's larger monkeys, such as howlers and muriquis, can grow to 50 times that heft. Read More...

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