Elwyn L Simons

Duke University | DU · Department of Evolutionary Anthropology

Evidence of historic predation is important to understand the role that predators play in molding fundamental aspects of primate biology. We examined the geographic demise of Prolemur simus from the perspective of its past behavioral ecology. Using paleontological data from the Late Pleistocene–Holocene deposits at Ankarana Massif, northern Madagas...

A well-preserved calcaneus referrable to Proteopithecus sylviae from the late Eocene Quarry L-41 in the Fayum Depression, Egypt, provides new evidence relevant to this taxon's uncertain phylogenetic position. We assess morphological affinities of the new specimen using three-dimensional geometric morphometric analyses with a comparative sample of p...

Oligopithecids are basal stem catarrhines that make their first definitive appearance in the fossil record in the latest Eocene of Egypt. Previously, the group was assumed to have gone locally extinct in northern Africa shortly after the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, with a last record at the ∼31.5 Ma Taqah locality in Oman. Here we describe a tiny ol...

The fossil record of phiomorph hystricognathous rodents from the Afro-Arabian Paleogene is important for understanding the origins and dispersal routes of the early crown hystricognaths. Here, we describe a “new” basal phiomorph genus and species, Acritophiomys bowni, based on complete upper and lower dentitions, mandibular fragments, and partial c...

The specialized grasping feet of primates, and in particular the nature of the hallucal grasping capabilities of living strepsirrhines and tarsiers (i.e., 'prosimians'), have played central roles in the study of primate origins. Prior comparative studies of first metatarsal (Mt1) morphology have documented specialized characters in living prosimian...

The Jebel Qatrani Formation in the Fayum Depression, Egypt, has yielded a diverse hyracoid fauna that includes both small- and large-bodied forms. Thyrohyrax domorictus is one of the most common hyracoids found in the upper sequence of the Formation, from sites dating to between 29 and 31 Ma. The dental morphology of T. domorictus is more similar t...

Characters and character states employed in phylogenetic analyses. (DOCX)

Character-taxon matrix employed in phylogenetic analyses. (DOCX)

Gaudeamus is an enigmatic hystricognathous rodent that was, until recently, known solely from fragmentary material from early Oligocene sites in Egypt, Oman, and Libya. Gaudeamus' molars are similar to those of the extant cane rat Thryonomys, and multiple authorities have aligned Gaudeamus with Thryonomys to the exclusion of other living and extinc...

A new genus and species of anomaluroid rodent, Kabirmys qarunensis, is described based on isolated teeth, partial mandibles, and an edentulous partial maxilla from the earliest late Eocene Birket Qarun Locality 2 (BQ-2) in the Fayum Depression of northern Egypt. Kabirmys is the largest known Paleogene anomaluroid, with first lower molar area being...

The ∼37 million-year-old Birket Qarun Locality 2 (BQ-2), in the Birket Qarun Formation of Egypt's Fayum Depression, yields evidence for a diverse primate fauna, including the earliest known lorisiforms, parapithecoid anthropoids, and Afradapis longicristatus, a large folivorous adapiform. Phylogenetic analysis has placed Afradapis as a stem strepsi...

A new genus and species of anomaluroid rodent, Kabirmys qarunensis, is described based on isolated teeth, partial mandibles, and an edentulous partial maxilla from the earliest late Eocene Birket Qarun Locality 2 (BQ-2) in the Fayum Depression of northern Egypt. Kabirmys is the largest known Paleogene anomaluroid, with first lower molar area being...

A large collection of lizard vertebrae from northern Africa represents the oldest unambiguous occurrence of the genus Varanus. The fossils come from late Eocene and early Oligocene freshwater deposits of the Fayum, Egypt, an area noted for many significant primate finds. The recovery and identification of this material indicate that the genus Varan...

Anthropoid primates were among the most common members of Afro-Arabian mammal faunas during the late Paleogene, and they may have been present on that landmass as early as the late Paleocene. Specialists continue to debate the role of Asia in early anthropoid diversification, and whether stem anthropoids originated in Asia or Afro-Arabia, but the A...

  A new genus and species of diminutive anomalurid rodent, Shazurus minutus, is described on the basis of 15 isolated teeth from the earliest late Eocene (approximately 37 Ma) Birket Qarun Locality 2 in the Fayum Depression of northern Egypt. Shazurus is surprisingly specialized for its age, being most similar in dental morphology to early Miocene...

A new hyracoid genus and species, Dimaitherium patnaiki from the early Late Eocene (early Priabonian) Birket Qarun Formation in the Fayum Depression, Egypt, is described. The material is approximately 37 million years old and three million years older than any other hyracoid known from the Fayum area. A partial cranium preserves features that are l...

A collection of fossil fish teeth and other elements from Eocene deposits on the northshore of Birket Qarun, Fayum Depression, Egypt, is reported. This collection adds significantly to our knowledge, as it consists of material that was screened from the sediments, allowing collection of small teeth that represent taxa not previously reported from t...

Paleontological work carried out over the last 3 decades has established that three major primate groups were present in the Eocene of Africa-anthropoids, adapiforms, and advanced strepsirrhines. Here we describe isolated teeth of a previously undocumented primate from the earliest late Eocene ( approximately 37 Ma) of northern Egypt, Nosmips aenig...

The fossil bearing beds of Moghra, Egypt, have been well known for over 100 years, but the ichthyofaunas have not been examined since the early 1900s. Moghra, on the northern rim of the Qattara Depression, preserves early Miocene (18–17 Ma) fluvio-marine sediments with fossils of wood, invertebrates and vertebrates. The Moghra site is faunally simi...

Agamid lizards are currently found in Africa, Asia, the eastern Mediterranean region and Australia. Together with the Chamaeleonidae and some extinct basal forms, they comprise the Acrodonta, lizards with acrodont dentition. The Acrodonta have been suggested to have a Gondwanan origin, with the oldest members found in the Triassic of India. The fir...

Vampyravus orientalis, from the Oligocene of Fayum, Egypt was the first fossil bat described from Africa. It is represented by a single, relatively large humerus from an unknown horizon in the Jebel Qatrani Formation. Based on regression analyses of skeletal proportions of modern bats, we developed a set of equations to estimate body mass of fossil...

Small mammals are rarely reported from subfossil sites in Madagascar despite their importance for paleoenvironmental reconstruction, especially as it relates to recent ecological changes on the island. We describe the uniquely rich subfossil small mammal fauna from Ankilitelo Cave, southwestern Madagascar. The Ankilitelo fauna is dated to the late...

Adapiform or 'adapoid' primates first appear in the fossil record in the earliest Eocene epoch ( approximately 55 million years (Myr) ago), and were common components of Palaeogene primate communities in Europe, Asia and North America. Adapiforms are commonly referred to as the 'lemur-like' primates of the Eocene epoch, and recent phylogenetic anal...

The known material of the side-necked turtle Dacquemys paleomorpha Williams, 1954, consists of the type skull and a new skull from the late Eocene of Egypt. Dacquemys is reaffirmed as a member of the Podocnemididae because of its well-developed cavum pterygoideus. Within the Podocnemididae Dacquemys uniquely possesses a fully roofed temporal region...

The early evolutionary and paleobiogeographic history of the diverse rodent clade Hystricognathi, which contains Hystricidae (Old World porcupines), Caviomorpha (the endemic South American rodents), and African Phiomorpha (cane rats, dassie rats, and blesmols) is of great interest to students of mammalian evolution, but remains poorly understood be...

This study employs dental microwear texture analysis to reconstruct the diets of two families of subfossil lemurs from Madagascar, the archaeolemurids and megaladapids. This technique is based on three-dimensional surface measurements utilizing a white-light confocal profiler and scale-sensitive fractal analysis. Data were recorded for six texture...

Vampyravus orientalis, from the Oligocene of Fayum, Egypt was the first fossil bat described from Africa. It is represented by a single, relatively large humerus from an unknown horizon in the Jebel Qatram Formation Based on regression analyses of skeletal proportions of modern bats, we developed a set of equations to estimate body mass of fossil b...

Paleontologists reconstruct the locomotor and postural behavior of extinct species by analogy with living forms and biomechanical analyses. In rare cases, behavioral evidence such as footprints can be used to confirm fossil-based reconstructions for predominantly terrestrial orders of mammals. For instance, the chalicothere prints from Laetoli show...

New specimens of Peratherium africanum from Early Oligocene deposits of the Fayum, Egypt, provide key information on the relationships of the species. These include the first maxilla to be found and two additional dentaries. The maxilla can be demonstrated to belong to the same species as the holotype dentary by study of the occlusal relationships...

The order Proboscidea includes extant elephants and their extinct relatives and is closely related to the aquatic sirenians (manatees and dugongs) and terrestrial hyracoids (hyraxes). Some analyses of embryological, morphological, and paleontological data suggest that proboscideans and sirenians shared an aquatic or semiaquatic common ancestor, but...

Paleogene bats from Africa are rare with only scant records from Tunisia, Egypt, and Tanzania having been described in the past. Four new genera and six new species of microchiropteran bats are described here from the late Eocene (37–34 Ma) of the Fayum Depression in northern Egypt. Included among these new taxa are the first and only African recor...

Paleogene bats from Africa are rare with only scant records from Tunisia, Egypt, and Tanzania having been described in the past. Four new genera and six new species of microchiropteran bats are described here from the late Eocene (37–34 Ma) of the Fayum Depression in northern Egypt. Included among these new taxa are the first and only African recor...

Molecular estimates for the divergence of Chrysochloridae (golden moles) and Tenrecoidea (tenrecs) date back to near the K-T boundary, but at present the oldest undoubted fossil members of these clades are early Miocene in age (~20 Ma). The only Paleogene African genus that has been proposed as a possible stem tenrecoid is late Eocene (~34 Ma) Wida...

A new mammalian genus and species from the earliest late Eocene of Egypt is represented by a lower jaw fragment and two isolated lower molars. A rare combination of features and the fragmentary nature of the materials make their taxonomic assignment to either Marsupialia or Chiroptera uncertain. The holotype of the new genus is the best-preserved s...

Variation in body size is well documented for both extant and extinct Malagasy primates, and appears to be correlated with geographic patterns of resource seasonality. Less attention has been paid to extant lemurs in subfossil collections, although it has been suggested that subfossil forms of extant species are characterized by greater size than t...

The most complete and best-preserved cranium of a Paleogene anthropoid ever found, that of a small female of the early Oligocene (≈29–30 Ma) stem catarrhine species Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, was recovered from the Jebel Qatrani Formation (Fayum Depression, Egypt) in 2004. The specimen is that of a subadult and, in craniodental dimensions, is the smal...

The origin of Madagascar’s highly endemic vertebrate fauna remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of natural history. From what landmasses did the basal stocks of this unique and imbalanced fauna come? When and how did the ancestral populations arrive on the island? How rapidly did they diversify, and why? The most direct means of addressing t...

An internal mandibular fenestra and chamber are found in many fossil hyracoids. The internal mandibular fenestra is located on the lingual surface of the mandibular corpus and opens into a chamber within the mandible. The mandibular chamber is maximally developed in late Eocene Thyrohyrax meyeri and early Oligocene Thyrohyrax domorictus from the Fa...

While many of the mammalian taxa from the Fayum of Egypt, such as the primates and hyraxes, have been well-studied, little is known about the rodents. Species described to date have all been referred to the endemic family Phiomyidae. Many rodent species from this family have been named and their importance to biogeography addressed, but what this f...

Early anthropoid evolution in Afro-Arabia is poorly documented, with only a few isolated teeth known from before approximately 35 million years ago. Here we describe craniodental remains of the primitive anthropoid Biretia from approximately 37-million-year-old rocks in Egypt. Biretia is unique among early anthropoids in exhibiting evidence for noc...

The late Eocene prosimian Wadilemur elegans from the Jebel Qatrani Formation, northern Egypt, was originally interpreted as an anchomomyin adapiform primate based on limited information from the lower molars and distal premolars. Recently recovered fossils attributable to this species, including a proximal femur, the fourth upper premolar and first...

Recent expeditions to Madagascar have recovered abundant skeletal remains of Archaeolemur, one of the so-called “monkey lemurs” known from Holocene deposits scattered across the island. These new skeletons are sufficiently complete to permit reassembly of entire hands and feet—postcranial elements crucial to drawing inferences about substrate prefe...

A new genus and species of Clupeidae, Chasmoclupea aegyptica, is described from early Oligocene fluviatile deposits of the Jebel Qatrani Formation in the Fayum, Egypt. The new species is preserved in three dimensions, allowing details of the skull roof, as well as lateral skull bones, to be seen. The new species is considered to be most closely rel...

Extant anthropoids have large brains, small olfactory bulbs, and high-acuity vision compared with other primates. The relative timing of the evolution of these characteristics may have important implications for brain evolution. Here computed tomography is used to examine the cranium of a fossil anthropoid, Parapithecus grangeri. It is found that P...

A new technique for molar use-wear analysis is applied to samples of all 16 species of extinct lemurs with known dentitions, as well as to a large comparative sample of extant primates. This technique, which relies on the light refractive properties of wear pits and scratches as seen under a standard stereoscopic microscope, has shown itself to be...

The living anthropoids tend to have large brains, small olfactory bulbs, and high acuity vision compared with other primates (Baron et al., 1983; Stephan et al., 1981). An interesting possibility is that an increasing emphasis on vision was in some way related to increases in brain size in the anthropoid lineage. It is certainly plausible that chan...

It is unlikely that any Afro-Arabian primate has engendered more controversy over the last half-century’s study of anthropoid origins than has the late Eocene species Oligopithecus savagei. In his original description of Oligopithecus, (1962) argued that this genus was best interpreted as a primitive catarrhine; like many other scholars, he was int...

Recently, I described a nearly complete cranium, DPC 18651, of an early anthropoid from the Fayum badlands of Egypt that belongs to the species Parapithecus grangeri (Simons, 2001). Apidiurn, Parapithecus, Qatrania, and Abuqatrania are three interrelated Fayum primates that all belong to the taxonomic family Parapithecidae. P. grangeri was describe...

Eremopezus eocaenus Andrews, 1904 is a giant groundbird from upper Eocene deposits of the Fayum, Egypt, which has hitherto been known from non-diagnostic fragmentary material. New fossils collected from quarry L-41 of the Jebel Qatrani Formation include two well-preserved distal tarsometatarsi and an associated whole tarsometatarsus and distal tibi...

Morphological, molecular, and biogeographic data bearing on early primate evolution suggest that the clade containing extant (or 'crown') strepsirrhine primates (lemurs, lorises and galagos) arose in Afro-Arabia during the early Palaeogene, but over a century of palaeontological exploration on that landmass has failed to uncover any conclusive supp...

The East African Early Miocene apes, or proconsulids, have often been considered to be among the earliest members of the Hominoidea, as defined by the divergence of the Cercopithecoidea, but this hypothesis is only weakly supported by available fossil evidence. The ethmofrontal sinus is one of a few morphological features that may link proconsulids...

When compared with their recently extinct relatives, living lemurs represent a mere fraction of a broad radiation that occupied unique niches in the recent past. Among living lemurs, indrids exhibit the fastest rates of dental development. This dental precocity is tightly correlated with rapid pace of postnatal dental eruption, early replacement of...

The hyracoid Antilohyrax pectidens Rasmussen and Simons, 2000 from quarry L-41 in the Fayum, Egypt displays many interesting features, including a comb-like, pectinate lower first incisor similar to that of the dermopteran Cynocephalus. Antilohyrax was originally described as lacking upper incisors, and having retracted nasal bones and selenodont c...

Among the best known of recently extinct Malagasy lemurs is Archaeolemur, which is represented by many hundreds of specimens. The phylogenetic affinities of this taxon are unclear, especially in light of recent preliminary analysis of ancient DNA which does not support its previously accepted close relationship with the living Indridae. We examined...

The phylogenetic relationships of the late Eocene anthropoids Catopithecus browni andProteopithecus sylviae are currently a matter of debate, with opinion divided as to whether these taxa are stem or crown anthropoids. The phylogenetic position of Catopithecus is of particular interest, for, unlike the highly generalized genusProteopithecus , this...

Inferring the behavior of extinct organisms is a formidable task, even under the best of circumstances (Rudwick, 1964; Stern and Susman, 1983; Kay, 1984; Thomason, 1995). Nevertheless, and in spite of inevitable complications and limitations, such inferences remain the ultimate goal of paleobiologists if we are to understand fossils as integrated o...

A fifth anthropoid (= anthropoidean, simian or simiiform) genus and species from the late Eocene Fayum Quarry L-41, Abuqatrania basiodontos gen. et sp. nov., further augments the already remarkable primate diversity from this locality and provides the first convincing extension of the enigmatic family Parapithecidae into the oldest productive verte...

A nearly complete skull of Parapithecus grangeri from the early Oligocene of Egypt is described. The specimen is relatively undistorted and is undoubtedly the most complete higher primate skull yet found in the African Oligocene, which also makes it the most complete Oligocene primate cranium worldwide. Belonging in superfamily Parapithecoidea, a g...

Over the last 90 years, Eocene and Oligocene aged sediments in the Fayum Depression of Egypt have yielded at least 17 genera of fossil primates. However, of this diverse sample the diets of only four early Oligocene anthropoid genera have been previously studied using quantitative methods. Here we present dietary assessments for 11 additional Fayum...

A number of recent studies have, by necessity, placed a great deal of emphasis on the dental evidence for Paleogene anthropoid interrelationships, but cladistic analyses of these data have led to the erection of phylogenetic hypotheses that appear to be at odds with biogeographic and stratigraphic considerations. Additional morphological data from...

Recently discovered wrist bones of the Malagasy subfossil lemurs Babakotia radofilai, Palaeopropithecus ingens, Mesopropithecus dolichobrachion, and Megaladapis madagascariensis shed new light on the postcranial morphologies and positional behaviors that characterized these extinct primates. Wrist bones of P. ingens resemble those of certain modern...

The lower dentition of Widanelfarasia (new genus), a diminutive late Eocene placental from the Fayum Depression in Egypt, is described. Widanelfarasia exhibits a complex of features associated with incipient zalambdodonty and at least three unequivocal apomorphies [loss of P(1), an enlarged I(2) (relative to I(3)), and a basal cusp on I(2)], which...

Recent excavation in the Late Eocene quarry L-41 (Fayum Depression, Egypt) revealed two tibiae and a femur in direct association with a mandible of Proteopithecus sylviae, arguably the most generalized African anthropoidean known from cranial remains. This discovery represents the first association of dental and postcranial material belonging to an...

Era is a small G-protein widely conserved in eubacteria and eukaryotes. Although essential for bacterial growth and implicated in diverse cellular processes, its actual function remains unclear. Several lines of evidence suggest that Era may be involved in some aspect of RNA biology. The GTPase domain contains features in common with all G-proteins...

Two very small late Eocene anthropoid primates, Catopithecus browni and Proteopithecus sylviae, from Fayum, Egypt show evidence of substantial sexual dimorphism in canine teeth. The degree of dimorphism suggests that these early anthropoids lived in social groups with a polygynous mating system and intense male-male competition. Catopithecus and Pr...