Evolution and Extinction of Afro-Arabian Primates Near the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary

Abstract

Revised age estimates for the primate-bearing localities of the Jebel Qatrani Formation (Fayum area, northern Egypt) have provided a new perspective on primate response to early Oligocene climate change in North Africa. Environmental changes associated with early Oligocene cooling might have driven the local extinction of at least 4 strepsirrhine primate clades (adapids, djebelemurines, plesiopithecids and galagids). Contrary to previous suggestions, oligopithecid (and possibly proteopithecid) anthropoids persisted beyond the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (EOB) in the Fayum area, and the former group evidently continued to diversify through the early Oligocene at lower latitudes. Propliopithecids and parapithecine parapithecids first appear in the Jebel Qatrani Formation millions of years after the EOB, so their derived dental and gnathic features can no longer be interpreted as sudden adaptive morphological responses to earliest Oligocene climatic events. Evidence for latitudinal contraction of Afro-Arabian primate distribution through the early Oligocene suggests that the profound late Oligocene restructuring of Afro-Arabian primate communities is most likely to have occurred in equatorial and low-latitude tropical Africa.