Early Miocene Primates & Late Miocene Primates

Early Miocene Primates & Late Miocene Primates

Introduction

The paper aims to emphasize on the description and contrast regarding early Miocene primates & late Miocene Primates. There are a large number of fossils of higher primates (apes), which date from the period 35 to 6 million years ago, and evolutionary variations between the little monkeys. The early Miocene hominoids developed the ancient apart in many ways and there were a large number of apes that lived a large part of the tropical and subtropical Old World (Hrdy, 1999). The animals and plans of the Miocene Epoch were fairly modern. The birds and the mammals were also well established. Seals, whales, and kelp spread. For geologists, Miocene epoch is of a particular interest and also the for the palaeoclimatologists as the major phases of the Himalayan uplift is known to be occurred during the Miocene Epoch which affected the monsoonal patterns in Asia, which were also interlinked with the glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere (Napier & Napier, 1985).

These subdivisions within the Miocene are actually defined according to the relative abundance which these difference species belonging to foraminifera which are protists with a single cell and diagnostic shells and Calcareous nano-fossils which are also called platelets and shed by brown single celled algae. These are the two subdivisions each from the late, middle and early Miocene. Other systems are known to be used regionally (Boaz, 1999).

Background

We can therefore say with high probability that Africa was inhabited by species that no longer exist, much like the gorilla and the chimpanzee. There are some species that are most similar to man. Charles Darwin in his book The Descent of Man, published in 1871. At that time there was no any fossil apes or human remains found since then have largely confirmed this intelligent prediction about the origin of mankind. However, the story is more complex than Darwin imagined. The fossil and genetic analyzes indicate that the last common ancestor of humans and our closest relative, the chimpanzee, lived in Africa between 6 and 8 million years (Begun et. al., 1997). For some time, paleoanthropologists have thought that would also African roots. However, there is increasing evidence that inherited this idea is wrong. By the beginning of the 30s of this century, scientists knew only about 60 genera of fossil primates. Intense search led to the fact that over the past 50 years was discovered more than 65 new species. This forced anthropologists to review all available materials.

Bear in mind that by allocating a new species or genus, the researcher has a very distant view of the possible scope of the individual, gender and age variation found among primate species, not to mention the fact that different features of the system may be in conflict with each other. Constant re-evaluation and re-examination even paleontological data and findings are an objective necessity and the specific feature of this field of research (Boaz, 1999). In the early Miocene, global temperatures appear to have ...