Xinhua News Agency, Kunming, September 4 (Reporter Zhao Peiran) Scientists from China, the United States, Greece and Australia have jointly researched and confirmed that the fossils closest to the ancestors of golden monkeys were discovered in the Shuitangba community in Zhaoyang District, Zhaotong City, Yunnan Province, 6.4 million years ago.
Two papers resulting from this achievement were recently published in the international academic journal "Journal of Human Evolution".
Jiang Nina, one of the corresponding authors of the paper and director of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, introduced that the Chinese monkey fossil is one of the most widely distributed non-human primate fossils.
The Zhaotong monkey fossil specimens were discovered in 2009 and 2010, which is the fossil record of this species reaching the easternmost part of Eurasia, and the first discovery of this genus in East Asia.
The newly discovered middle monkey is a female individual.
"The fossils of Chinese monkeys found in the Zhaotong Reservoir dam confirm that the ancestors of Asian golden monkeys should be ancient primates similar to Chinese monkeys, and molecular biology believes that the earliest ancestors of golden monkeys should have evolved from a monkey animal in Yunnan, China. Inference.” said Ji Xueping, the first author of the paper and a researcher at the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. The detailed comparison and quantitative analysis of anatomical features indicate that the Chinese monkey found in Zhaotong is the same species as found in Europe.
Ji Xueping said that since 7 million years ago, the global climate has become dry and cold. The monkeys have survived along the tropical and subtropical forest corridors in southern Eurasian continent to the relatively warm and humid "refuge" Zhaotong. , Eventually evolved into part or all of the living Asian colobus monkeys, which may be the most primitive ancestor of living golden monkeys.