A Glimpse Into India’s Palaeoanthropological Past: Fossil Primates of the Pliocene and the Pleistocene

Abstract

The Pliocene was a period of major faunal shift in India as older primate lineages slowly went extinct, leaving the niches vacant for cercopithecoids, specifically cercopithecids (Old World monkeys), to occupy. Among them, Presbytis sivalensis, Macaca palaeindica and Procynocephalus subhimalayanus are important, as they are potential kin to many of the South Asian and Southeast Asian monkeys living today. Further in the Pleistocene, as ecology shifted to a more grassland environment, primates such as Theropithecus delsoni and the first people of Homo sp. migrated into the subcontinent and occupied central India. All of these primate fossils are known only from a handful of fragmentary fossil remains. This article aims to discuss the discovery of fossils and the nature of these fossils from the Pliocene and the Pleistocene. Information regarding the phylogenetic affinities of these fossil primates is sporadic as well. There is a need to learn more about these primates by reanalysing existing discoveries and conducting further research into the lives of these primates of a bygone era. Such research, using modern tools and methods, will surely make significant contributions to palaeoanthropology.