Asian Miocene Primates

MOLECULAR-BASED PHYLOGENY OF ASIAN MIOCENE PRIMATES

A challenge conceptually similar to Projects 1 and 2, although in a completely different geographic and chronological scenario, will be tackled by PROJECT 3. The evolutionary relationships between extant great apes and the large number of fossil hominoid species from the Middle and Late Miocene (16-5.3 Ma) and the Pleistocene is unclear, in part because the fossil record of extant non-hominin great apes is very sparse. The fossil record of the giant great ape Gigantopithecus blacki spans from the Early Pleistocene (~2.0 Ma) to the late Middle Pleistocene (~0.3 Ma), while its known fossil localities are all situated in a subtropical area of Southeast Asia. The phylogenetic relationships of Gigantopithecus with extant and extinct hominids remains elusive due to the absence of known cranial or postcranial remains and the primitive dental characteristics shared between Gigantopithecus and most other Miocene hominids, such that current hypotheses that link it with extinct and extant pongines (Sivapithecus and Pongo, respectively) are difficult to substantiate and lack both strong morphological or independent molecular support. Recent published data generated at UCPH confirm the recovery of palaeoproteomic sequences from subtropical Gigantopithecus blacki specimens ~2 Ma. PROJECT 3 will resolve the long-debated phylogenetic position of Gigantopithecus, confirming, or rejecting, whether the Gigantopithecus lineage originated during the late Miocene, which would support the link with Sivapithecus and allied taxa, or instead in the Pleistocene, which would support a closer link to orangutans.

More than 200 hominid fossil dental remains spanning from the Miocene to the Pleistocene from Asia and including various taxa such as Sivapithecus, Gigantopithecus, Pongo, Meganthropus and Homo erectus are housed at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum of Frankfurt am Main in Germany (https://www.senckenberg.de) under the care of Prof. Friedemann Schrenk and Dr. Ottmar Kullmer who actively collaborate with researchers in the PUSHH project and represent a fundamental asset to the success of ESR3 and ESR4.