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NarrativeWikipediaarticle
Occurrence & distributionGBIF · PBDB34 records
Deep timePBDB2 fossils
01Narrative
Aegyptopithecus skull Aegyptopithecus ("Egyptian ape", from Greek Αίγυπτος "Egypt" and πίθηκος "ape") is an early fossil catarrhine that predates the divergence between hominoids (apes) and cercopithecids (Old World monkeys). It is known from a single species, Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, which lived around 38-29.5 million years ago in the early part of the Oligocene epoch. It likely resembled modern-day New World monkeys, and was about the same size as a modern howler monkey, which is about 56 to long. Aegyptopithecus fossils have been found in the Jebel Qatrani Formation of modern-day Egypt. Aegyptopithecus is believed to be a stem-catarrhine, a crucial link between Eocene and Miocene fossils. Aegyptopithecus zeuxis has become one of the best known extinct primates based on craniodental and postcranial remains.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
Fossil range33.9–27.3 Ma Oligocene
Dated fossil finds2
StatusExtinct no longer alive anywhere
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Aegyptopithecus zeuxis. Above itBeside it, each dot is one dated fossil find — few enough to count, so they are drawn individually rather than as a graph.
fossil range (PBDB) †each dot = one dated find
How it livedPBDB
Environmentterrestrial
Life habitarboreal
Dietomnivore
Motilityactively mobile
Compositionhydroxyapatite
Reproductionviviparous
08Occurrence & distribution
Record type34 records
Museum / vouchered2
Fossil32
Range
Area of Occupancy AOO4 km²
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
