The recent Discovery of the ‘Stout little monkey’ fossil from an underwater cave in the Dominican Republic could make it possible to understand what caused it to disappear from Hispaniola.
Researchers say the fossil could be around 3,000 years old, but the species itself could be very ancient, well over 10 million years old.
The discovery included an almost complete skull and surprisingly stout legs. This was an unexpected occurrence since there are no current living examples of New World monkeys with stout legs like that.
Dr. Rosenberger from Brooklyn College in New York, led the examination and suggests the primate could have behaved similarly to a koala, clinging to the trunks of trees, rather than leaping from branch to branch.
The “Stout little monkey’ fossil adds to evidence that several lineages of primates existed in the Caribbean, instead of one ancestor from which all modern species evolved. This recent discovery is only the second specimen of the species Antillothrix bernensis ever found.
