Puncture marks on early African anthropoids

Bibliographic Data

ID8317690
AuthorsDaniel L Gebo (Duke University), Elwyn L Simons (Duke University)
Year1984
Volume65
Issue1
Pages31-35
Publication date1984-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9483 • E-ISSN: 1096-8644
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ajpa.1330650106
PMID6437235
OpenAlexW2000429347
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited7

Field studies of living primates have shown that primate predation is a rare event. This must also have been true for past primate communities. In the Fayum Oligocene of Egypt, specimens of all four species of Upper Fossil Wood Zone primates show evidence of tooth puncture marks. Of the four potential groups of primate predators–the snakes, the raptors, the crocodiles, and the primitive carnivores or creodonts–only the crocodiles and the creodonts could have made these puncture marks. When one compares the feeding habits of living crocodiles and mammalian carnivores with the evidence from the Fayum, it appears that the Fayum primates were preyed upon and/or scavenged by mammalian carnivore‐like animals. The dismemberment of the Fayum primates by Oligocene predators indicates, in part, why the Fayum fossil material is rarely articulated. Bone damage by predators may well set limits on what bone associations can be discovered in the Fayum even before the bones are scattered and buried by depositional processes

Biology · Carnivore · Fossil wood · Predation · Primate · Zoology · Ecology · Evolution and Paleontology Studies · Paleontology · Primate Behavior and Ecology · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation