Khoratpithecus

The holotype, a lower jaw fragment of Khoratpithecus piriyai

• Nakhon Ratchasima Province ( Khorat ), Thailand

• Khoratpithecus piriyai

Khoratpithecus is an extinct genus of primates that occurred during the late Miocene in Asia. The only widely recognized proof of this genus is in the northeast of Thailand discovered, incomplete mandible with preserved molars. It was discovered in 2002 and dated to the period before about 9-7 million years ago.

This mandible is according to the first description at the same time the holotype of the species Khoratpithecus piriyai. The occasion also provided to Khoratpithecus finds the type Khoratpithecus chiangmuanensis be assigned by various authors today as Lufengpithecus chiangmuanensis the genus Lufengpithecus.

Khoratpithecus regarded as fossil relative of extant orangutans and is therefore classified in the family of Ponginae. The name is derived from Khorat, an abbreviation for the Thai province of Nakhon Ratchasima and from the Greek word πίθηκος ( ancient Greek pronounced píthēkos: "Monkey " ), and thus means " monkey from Khorat "; the epithet honors piriyai Piriya Vachajitpan, a Thai private collector of fossils, who acquired the lower jaw and left him to specialist scientists for further analysis. The mandible has the archive number RIN 765 ( Rajabhat Institute Nakhon Ratchasima ).

The lower jaw was discovered by a worker in a sand pit in the district Chalerm Prakieat along with some fossil elephant teeth and sold by this worker to a private collector. Due to the size of the resulting teeth and the thickness of the enamel the fossil in the original description to the alleged close relatives genera Lufengpithecus and Gigantopithecus was deferred. The absence of an attachment point for the front of the digastric muscle - which also absent in the extant orangutans - was concluded that Khoratpithecus piriyai may be more closely related to the orang- utans of the present as other fossil species from the same mold circle.

Based on fossil records of other species it was concluded that Khoratpithecus lived in a tropical forest. Maybe he nourished himself - as the extant orangutans and chimpanzees - mainly of fruits and other relatively soft food.