Aegyptopithecus, before the split
A Fayum primate with a monkey's body and an ape's teeth sits just below the ape-monkey divergence.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Oligocene, Cenozoic
Aegyptopithecus zeuxis is a cat-sized fruit-eating catarrhine from the Egyptian Fayum, known from skulls, limb bones and a good sample of individuals. It predates the divergence between apes and Old World monkeys, so it shows what the common ancestor of both was like: quadrupedal, arboreal, with a small brain relative to later catarrhines but marked sexual dimorphism in canine size, implying competition between males. Its species name means joining, for its position between groups.