Researchers have used fossilized teeth found near Lake Turkana in northwest Kenya to identify a new monkey species — a discovery that helps fill a 6-million-year gap in primate evolution.
UNLV geoscientist Terry Spell and former master's student Dawn Reynoso were part of the international research team that discovered the species that lived 22 million years ago. Understanding the evolution of Old World monkeys is important because, along with the great apes and humans, they belong to the anthropoid group of primates — primates that resemble humans.
According to Spell, the monkey fossil discovery grew out of a more extensive study of a section of sedimentary rocks in Kenya that contain a large number of different types of fossils, including several hundred mammal and reptile jaws, limbs, and teeth.
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