Nakalipithecus

• Nakali (Kenya )

Nakalipithecus nakayamai is an extinct species of primate in the genus Nakalipithecus that occurred during the late Miocene in East Africa. In Kenya, on the eastern edge of the Great African grave breach discovered fossils to put this kind, dated their discoverer in the original description of Nakalipithecus nakayamai in 2007 using the 39Ar - 40Ar method in the time before 9.9 to 9.8 million years ago.

As holotype was in the original description by Yutaka Kunimatsu et al. the fragment of a lower jaw with three remaining large molars of a presumably adult individuals reported (archive number KNM- NA46400 ). As paratypes the holotype were added a further eleven individual teeth from the same reference. This is Nakali, 40 km west of Maralal, the capital of the Samburu district. The fossils are in the Nairobi National Museum (formerly National Museum of Kenya, therefore KNM ) held in Nairobi.

Nakalipithecus nakayamai is also the type species of the genus Nakalipithecus. This name is derived from the locality within the territory of Nakali and πίθηκος of Greek, ancient Greek, pronounced píthēkos = "monkey". Nakayamai The epithet commemorates the late geologist Katsuhiro Nakayama, who had belonged to the predominantly originating from Japan excavation team.

The body size of Nakalipithecus is comparable to that of female gorillas. In the first description of Nakalipithecus nakayamai whose habitat is due to fossil records of other species - interpreted as forested - including Slim and colobus monkeys of the genus Microcolobus. The features are similar to those of Nakalipithecus the slightly younger in Greece discovered Ouranopithecus macedoniensis whose more thickened enamel but an indication of a more open and drier habitats.

Ouranopithecus macedoniensis was - although known only from Greece - has repeatedly been considered as a possible close relative of the common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and the Hominini into consideration. The roughly the same age of Nakalipithecus Fund provides the authors, according to his first description new clues to the anatomy of the immediate ancestors of all present-day African apes; is explicitly mentioned that this species " the last common ancestor of extant African great apes and humans could be close ." This last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans is now mostly dates back to the time before 9-8 million years ago, with fossils from the late Miocene (from 11-5 million years ago ) in Africa to date are very rare; Exceptions are, for example Chororapithecus and ( with far less clear -relational mapping ) Samburupithecus kiptalami whose upper jaw was discovered in 1982 in northern Kenya in the Samburu Hills. From this poverty of African discoveries had previously been closed repeatedly that the immediate ancestors of modern apes are probably lived in Eurasia and migrated from there to Africa.