This value corresponds to the upper limit of the split between hominoid and cercopithecoid primates.
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Primers were designed from conserved regions of the cercopithecoid and human sequences in the public databases.
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Although hominins are relatively rare in the assemblage, remains of cercopithecoid primates are much more common.
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The C 1 calibration was based on the estimated ages of the three earliest putative cercopithecoid and hominoid fossils.
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The gelada is the only cercopithecoid examined that retains the potential for exonization, while all Great Apes retain this potential.
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Craniodental fossils currently indicate the possible presence of at least three large-bodied cercopithecoid primate genera at Cooper's D: Gorgopithecus, Papio, and Theropithecus.
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This species also possessed a robust zygomatic bone and a pronounced snout. This species had a broad interorbital region and small frontoethmoidal sinuses. The maxillary sinus was restricted. This species had an auditory region which would be similar to that of extant apes and cercopithecoid monkeys.
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Based on the cranium, this species had an external brain surface much like that of gibbons and cercopithecoid monkeys. The wrist of this species has been described as monkey-like. This species has a talus in which the trochlear surface is highly curved and deeply grooved. The foot of this species possessed a transverse arch.
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However, one palaeontologist, Eric Delson, has cautioned that geological pressure may have distorted the shape of the skull. According to Zalmout et al., Saadanius may also help resolve the age of the hominoid–cercopithecoid split. Paleoanthropological work has typically placed the divergence between 25 and 23 mya, but genetic-based estimates have placed it in the early Oligocene, approximately 33 mya.
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Alophe metios was an early cercopithecoid monkey that lived in Kenya about 22 million years ago. It is known from jaw fragments and teeth. Although it was more closely related to modern cercopithecids (Old World monkeys) than to apes, it had not evolved some features shared by crown cercopithecids and their nearest relatives, such as bilophodont molars. The monkey was originally named Alophia metios, but the genus Alophia was already taken by a moth, prompting the new name Alophe.
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Animated 3D view of the skull The discovery of Saadanius provides new evidence for competing hypotheses about the facial appearance of the ancestral crown catarrhines, or common ancestor. One reconstruction is based on living catarrhine traits and predicts a short face and a rounded braincase, similar to that of a gibbon. Another reconstruction, based on the morphology of early Miocene apes and the basal cercopithecoid Victoriapithecus, predicts that the last common ancestor had a projecting snout and tall face, like that of living baboons and the oldest fossil apes and Old World monkeys. The conservative features of Saadanius, similar to those of the older stem catarrhines, support the latter hypothesis, according to Zalmout et al.
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Lufengpithecus lufengensis is an extinct ape recovered from lignite (soft coal) beds at the Shihuiba Locality in Lufeng County, Yunnan, China, dating to the latest Miocene. It was originally thought to represent two distinct species, Sivapithecus yunnanensis, thought to be an ancestor of Pongo (orangutans), and Ramapithecus lufengensis, thought to be an early human ancestor. The recognition in the 1980s that "Ramapithecus" fossils were females of Sivapithecus led to the creation of the new genus and species Lufengpithecus lufengensis to accommodate the large collection of hominoid fossils recovered at Lufeng in the 1970s. The species was recognized to have a very large degree of sexual dimorphism, more comparable to that seen in cercopithecoid monkeys than in any living ape.
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