Seiffert Erik R
Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
Folia Primatol (Basel). 2007;78(5-6):314-27. doi: 10.1159/000105147. Epub 2007 Sep 7.
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.
对杰贝勒卡特拉尼组（埃及北部法尤姆地区）含灵长类化石地层的年龄重新估算，为灵长类对北非渐新世早期气候变化的响应提供了新视角。与渐新世早期降温相关的环境变化可能导致了至少4个原猴亚目灵长类分支（兔猴科、杰贝勒狐猴科、近猴科和婴猴科）在当地灭绝。与之前的观点相反，渐新猿科（可能还有原猿科）类人猿在法尤姆地区持续存在至始新世-渐新世边界（EOB）之后，并且渐新猿科类群显然在渐新世早期继续在低纬度地区分化。原上猿科和副猿科副猿属在EOB之后数百万年才首次出现在杰贝勒卡特拉尼组，因此它们特有的牙齿和颌骨特征不能再被解释为对最早渐新世气候事件的突然适应性形态反应。渐新世早期非洲-阿拉伯灵长类分布的纬度收缩证据表明，非洲-阿拉伯灵长类群落的深刻渐新世晚期重组最有可能发生在赤道和低纬度热带非洲地区。
