Last primate of North America | National Geographic

The animal that lived at the dawn of the Oligocene represents the evolutionary path of which we humans are members today. The Egmovechashala Its fossils have been found in the western United States, and a new one, A Journal of Human Evolution Research results published in a journal in China. The study was carried out by University of Kansas explained.

The fauna of North America appeared in the Eocene 56 million years ago and then became extinct about 20 million years later. A cooling began in America, which brought with it a decrease in precipitation and a change in the living world, warm-loving animals then disappeared. There seemed to be only one exception, which is why their representative was 4 million years later, 30 million years old. Egmovechashala.

The Kansas researchers, along with researchers from the Chinese Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, made the discovery. Egmovechashala Its evolution, with the help of pre-American Chinese artifacts over time. The animal first came from Asia and then migrated from there to North America. Although it was cold, it did not evolve locally from animals that had previously lived there, but was a migratory species.

A faj izlandi vulkánokat megszégyenítő módon kimondhatatlan neve annak köszönhető, hogy leletei a Dél-Dakotában, az oglala sziúk földjén, a híres Wounded Knee-i mészárlás helyszínéhez közel kerültek elő, ezért az oglala nyelvből választották ki az állat nevét, ami annyit tesz: apró macskaember.

Only teeth were found in America, Chinese fossils can be called a little more complete: even a small fragment of the jaw is preserved here. Fortunately, the teeth are so characteristic that, based on them, the later discovered Chinese animal was perfectly identified. Representatives of the Chinese primate reached North America through the Beringia region (which still connected the two continents at the time), practically along the same route as humans did several million years later.

The Egmovechashala According to the researchers, its history is important because it was a player in the same kind of environmental and climate change that the living world is experiencing today during human-caused climate change. 34 million years ago, American fauna died off the continent, unable to adapt to the new climate.

The current research is an early chapter in a long story of evolutionary changes that eventually led to us as humans.