Washington, May 17 (ANI): A physical anthropologist has discovered a previously unknown species of fossil primate, Mescalerolemur horneri, in the Devil's Graveyard badlands of West Texas.
Mescalerolemur lived during the Eocene Epoch about 43 million years ago, and would have most closely resembled a small present-day lemur.
Mescalerolemur is a member of an extinct primate group - the adapiforms - that were found throughout the Northern Hemisphere in the Eocene.
However, just like Mahgarita stevensi, a younger fossil primate found in the same area in 1973, Mescalerolemur is more closely related to Eurasian and African adapiforms than those from North America.
"These Texas primates are unlike any other Eocene primate community that has ever been found in terms of the species that are represented," said Chris Kirk, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin.
Fossils of Mescalerolemur reveal it was a small primate, weighing only about 370 grams.
The finding will be published in the Journal of Human Evolution. (ANI)
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