{"id":95436,"date":"2023-11-06T17:05:08","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T22:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sci.news\/?p=95436"},"modified":"2023-11-06T17:05:08","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T22:05:08","slug":"ekgmowechashala-12425","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sci.news\/paleontology\/ekgmowechashala-12425.html","title":{"rendered":"Paleontologists Find New Fossils of Enigmatic North American Primate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ekgmowechashala\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em><\/a> is a poorly documented but very distinctive species of ancient primate that lived in western North America during the Early Oligocene epoch, some 30 million years ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_95437\" style=\"width: 590px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sci.news\/images\/enlarge11\/image_12425e-Ekgmowechashala.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-95437\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-95437 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sci.news\/images\/2023\/11\/image_12425-Ekgmowechashala.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration of Ekgmowechashala, the last primate to inhabit North America before humans. Image credit: Kristen Tietjen \/ Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, University of Kansas.\" width=\"580\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sci.news\/images\/2023\/11\/image_12425-Ekgmowechashala.jpg 580w, https:\/\/www.sci.news\/images\/2023\/11\/image_12425-Ekgmowechashala-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.sci.news\/images\/2023\/11\/image_12425-Ekgmowechashala-104x75.jpg 104w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-95437\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustration of <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em>, the last primate to inhabit North America before humans. Image credit: Kristen Tietjen \/ Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, University of Kansas.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cOur project focuses on a very distinctive fossil primate known to paleontologists since the 1960s,\u201d said Kathleen Rust, a doctoral candidate with Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum at the <a href=\"https:\/\/ku.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">University of Kansas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDue to its unique morphology and its representation only by dental remains, its place on the mammalian evolutionary tree has been a subject of contention and debate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s been a prevailing consensus leaning towards its classification as a primate. But the timing and appearance of this primate in the North American fossil record are quite unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt appears suddenly in the fossil record of the Great Plains more than 4 million years after the extinction of all other North American primates, which occurred around 34 million years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the 1990s, University of Kansas Professor Chris Beard collected fossils from the Nadu Formation in the Baise Basin in Guangxi, China, that closely resembled the <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> material known from North America.<\/p>\n<p>By that time, <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> was notoriously enigmatic among North American paleontologists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we were working there, we had absolutely no idea that we would find an animal that was closely related to this bizarre primate from North America, but literally as soon as I picked up the jaw and saw it, I thought, \u2018Wow, this is it\u2019,\u201d Professor Beard said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not like it took a long time, and we had to undertake all kinds of detailed analysis &#8212; we knew what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have some critical fossils, including what is still by far the best upper molar of <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> known from North America. That upper molar is so distinctive and looks quite similar to the one from China that we found that it kind of seals the deal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The authors conducted the morphological analysis that tied <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> and its cousin <em>Palaeohodites<\/em> from China in a phylogenetic tree to establish their evolutionary relationships.<\/p>\n<p>In the course of the work, they were able to draw conclusions about how <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> came to be discovered in Nebraska, millions of years after its fellow primates died out in the continent\u2019s fossil record.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe collected a substantial amount of morphological data to create an evolutionary tree using a phylogenetic reconstruction software and algorithm,\u201d Rust said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis evolutionary tree suggests a close evolutionary relationship between North American <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> and <em>Palaeohodites<\/em> from China, which Chris and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe results from our analysis unequivocally support this hypothesis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to the researchers, <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> did not descend from an older North American primate that somehow survived the cooler and drier conditions that caused other North American primates to go extinct.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, its ancestors crossed over the Beringian region millions of years later, anticipating the route followed by the first Native Americans much later in time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur analysis dispels the idea that <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> is a relic or survivor of earlier primates in North America,\u201d Rust said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead, it was an immigrant species that evolved in Asia and migrated to North America during a surprisingly cool period, most likely via Beringia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpecies like <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> that show up suddenly in the fossil record long after their relatives have died off are referred to as \u2018Lazarus taxa\u2019 after the Biblical figure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe \u2018Lazarus effect\u2019 in paleontology is when we find evidence in the fossil record of animals apparently going extinct &#8212; only to reappear after a long hiatus, seemingly out of nowhere,\u201d Professor Beard said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the grand pattern of evolution that we see in the fossil record of North American primates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0047248423001318\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">findings<\/a> appear today in the <em>Journal of Human Evolution<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\">_____<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #808080;\">Kathleen Rust <em>et al<\/em>. Phylogeny and paleobiogeography of the enigmatic North American primate <em>Ekgmowechashala<\/em> illuminated by new fossils from Nebraska (USA) and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (China). <em>Journal of Human Evolution<\/em>, published online November 6, 2023; doi: 10.1016\/j.jhevol.2023.103452<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ekgmowechashala is a poorly documented but very distinctive species of ancient primate that lived in western North America during the Early Oligocene epoch, some 30 million years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1324,17],"tags":[63,19343,65,19344,2322,4489,2217,19345,243,727],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Paleontologists Find New Fossils of Enigmatic North American Primate | 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