sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/701/1 -
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Published on: 1/1/2009
Last Visited: 7/8/2009
"It shows that Ida is out of the running as a [human] ancestor," says the fossil's discoverer, paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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In 2005, Beard discovered a 37-million-year-old jaw fragment in the badlands of central Myanmar.
The jaw belonged to an amphipithecid, which Beard and paleontologist Jean-Jacques Jaeger of the University of Poitiers in France have named Ganlea megacanina in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Although the fossil is not nearly as dazzling as a complete skeleton of Ida, Beard knew immediately that the jaw was something special.
The jaw belonged to an amphipithecid, which Beard and paleontologist Jean-Jacques Jaeger of the University of Poitiers in France have named Ganlea megacanina in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Although the fossil is not nearly as dazzling as a complete skeleton of Ida, Beard knew immediately that the jaw was something special.
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This monkeylike behavior, as well as anatomical features in other fossils of amphipithecids from Asia, adds new evidence to the view that amphipithecids were early anthropoids and, hence, that anthropoids arose in Asia, says Beard.