40 Million Year Old Primate Fossils Found In Asia

sosaited writes "It has been widely believed that our ancestors originated out of Africa, but a paper published in Nature by Carnegie Museum of Natural History scientists puts this in doubt. The paper is based on the fossils of four primate species found in Asia which are 40 million years old, during which period Africa was thought to not have these species. The diversity and timing of the new anthropoids raises two scenarios. Anthropoids might simply have emerged in Africa much earlier than thought, and gone undiscovered by modern paleontologists. Or they could have crossed over from Asia, where evidence suggests that anthropoids lived 55 million years ago, flourishing and diversifying in the wide-open ecological niches of an anthropoid-free Africa."

Re:we weren't the first

[MichaelSmith]

Prior civilisations would have left artefacts in space. Geosynchronous orbit is both attractive and stable, but it was empty when we got here. Then there is all the fossil fuel we are burning. Why would an earlier civilisation leave it for us?

Re:Not found in Asia

[HiThere]

I thought that primates arising in Asia was standard. I don't remember the time-line, but I thought they arose in Asia where the Gibbons and then Orangutangs split off, and then some migrated to Africa where the rest of the primates developed.

40 million years is a rather long span of time, so I don't see any problems. The only catch is that Libya is in Africa, so this means that primates need to have been widely distributed by then. Either that or done an awful lot of migrating and dying out in the home range. Wider distribution seems more likely.

P.S.: Primates don't generally fossilize well. When they die their bones are usually moved by predators and cracked for marrow. And most of them don't live in terrain that facilitates fossilization. (People are exceptional in this regard.) This is one of the reasons why fossils of primates are often causes for rejoicing. (Egotism is, of course, the other reason.)

African Genesis Theory is merely "convenient"

[Baby Duck]

We don't really know where early hominds or early primates came from. Signs point to Africa merely because 1) it geologically has a good track record of fossilization and 2) yearly powerful rains directly pounding millions year-old exposed mud and rock make it easy to find fossils at ground level. For all we know, early primates and hominids could have come from where Detroit or Seoul or Sydney currently is. If those sites are geologically poor at lending itself to fossilization, we'd never know.

Re:Could they really cross continents?

[pnewhook]

Very nice map link. And do you know what is also very evident? That the ice capped poles are VERY recent and NOT the normal climate of our world. So everyone please STOP complaining about the ice cap melt, they are not supposed to be there in the first place. Climate change is normal, but what we really need to be concerned about is the effect of our pollution and deforestation on the planet. Fix man's destructive effects and the climate will change as it is intended.