The fayum primate forest revisited

doi:10.1016/S0047-2484(82)80008-0

Journal of Human Evolution

Volume 11, Issue 7, November 1982, Pages 603-632

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0047-2484(82)80008-0 Get rights and content

In Oligocene times, the Fayum area of northern Egypt was a subtropical to tropical lowland coastal plain with damp soils and seasonal rainfall that supported an abundance and variety of vegetation, including lianes (large vines), tall trees, and possibly mangroves, and a large and varied vertebrate fauna. The Oligocene marine strandline was close by and principal Jebel Qatrani Formation streams were probably brackish several kilometers inland due to tidal incursions.

Sediments of the Jebel Qatrani Formation were deposited by several large meandering streams, associated with minor but sometimes extensive floodbasin ponds. These rocks provide no evidence for the former existence, in early Tertiary time, of a “Proto-Nile” River. Large accumulations of silicified fossil logs in the Jebel Qatrani Formation are autochthonous and the logs were transported only a short distance before burial. The Oligocene higher primates Aegyptopithecus, Propliopithecus, Parapithecus, and Apidium lived in this paleoenvironment and postcranial remains of Aegyptopithecus and Apidium demonstrate that these animals were arboreal. This scenario for the paleoenvironment of the Fayum area in Oligocene times differs greatly from the nearly treeless, sparsely vegetated, semiarid sahélien Oligocene Fayum paleoenvironment populated by terrestrial primates that was recently proposed by Kortlandt (1980).

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For example, studies have found features on the distal humerus, such as the size and shape of the capitula and medial epicondyles, that differentiate these substrate categories (Jolly, 1967; Feldesman, 1982; Fleagle and Simons, 1982, 1995; Harrison, 1989). Most of the previous work on these features has analyzed these linear dimensions individually, often as ratios, to identify locomotor and taxonomic affinities of extant and fossil primates (Bown et al., 1982; Feldesman, 1982; Rose, 1983, 1989; 1993; Harrison, 1989; Krentz, 1993; Fleagle and Simons, 1995; McCrossin et al., 1998). Fewer studies have focused specifically on terrestrial versus arboreal quadrupedalism in Old World monkeys, with special consideration of intermediate forms of locomotion (Gebo and Sargis, 1994; Elton, 2002; Elton et al., 2016), and only a handful have attempted to capture the variation in more than one feature in a multivariate or geometric morphometric analysis to better represent the differences in morphology between locomotor groups (but see Feldesman, 1976, 1982; Manaster, 1979; Ciochon, 1993; Rein et al., 2011, 2015).
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The fayum primate forest revisited

Sedimentary Geology

Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology

Advances in Agronomy

Journal of Human Evolution

Geoderma

Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology

Evolution and biogeography of Madrean-Tethyan sclerophyll vegetation

Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden

Late Cretaceous and Tertiary vegetation history of Africa

Late-Mesozoic and Tertiary palaeoenvironments of the Sahara Region

Nues zur Geologie und Paläontologie Ägyptens

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft

Geologie Ägyptens

Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft

The Stratigraphy of the Jebel el Qatrani Formation in the Fayum Depression, Egypt, U.A.R.

Paleoenvironmental interpretations of the Oligocene Jebel el Qatrani Formation, Fayum Depression, Egypt, U.A.R.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs

Paleoenvironmental interpretations of the Oligocene Gabal el Qatrani Formation, Fayum Depression, Egypt

Annals of the Geological Survey of Egypt

Geology and mammalian paleontology of the Sand Creek facies, lower Willwood Formation (lower Eocene), Washakie County, Wyoming

Geological Survey of Wyoming Memoir

Tertiary lacustrine sediments from Sentinal Butte, North Dakota, and the sedimentary record of ectogenic meromixis

Journal of Sedimentary Petrology

Present soil-forming factors and processes in arid and semiarid regions

Soil Science

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Some Upper Cretaceous and Eocene fruits from Egypt

Bulletin of the British Museum of Natural History, Geology

Primate postcranial remains from the Oligocene of Egypt

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Locomotor behavior in living and fossil pongids

Nature

Morphology of soils with fragipans in parts of Wilson County, North Carolina

Major chemical and mineral components of profundal surface sediments in Minnesota lakes

Limnology and Oceanography

A review of the reptile faunas of Egypt

The Geological Survey of Egypt and Mining Authority Paper

Araceae-Monsteroidea

Locomotor behavior and skeletal anatomy of sympatric Malaysian leaf-monkeys (Presbytis obscura and Presbytis melalophos)

Yearbook of Physical Anthropology

Locomotion, posture and habitat utilization of two sympatric Malaysian leaf-monkeys (Presbytis obscura and Presbytis melalophos)

Locomotor behavior of the ealriest anthropoids: a review of the current evidence

Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie

Locomotor adaptations of Oligocene and Miocene hominoids and their phyletic implications

Sexual dimorphism in early anthropoids

Nature

Humeral morphology of the earliest apes

Nature

Anatomy of the bony pelvis of parapithecid primates

Folia Primatologica

The humerus of Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, a primitive anthropoid

Ape limb bone from the Oligocene of Egypt

Science

Paléosols résiduels et paléosols alluviaux hydromorphes associés aux dépôts fluviatiles dans le Crétacé supérieur et l'Éocène basal du Languedoc

Revue de Géographie Physique et de Géologie Dynamique

Soils and geomorphology in the Basin and Range area of southern New Mexico—Guidebook to the Desert Prject

New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources Memoir

The K horizon: a master soil horizon of carbonate accumulation

Soil Science

Morphological and genetic sequences of carbonate accumulation in desert soils

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Quaternary stratigraphy in the Basin and Range and Great Plains Provinces, New Mexico and western Texas

Calcretes of Olduvai Gorge and the Ndolanya Beds of northern Tanzania

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