Important scientific discoveries are hardly ever so darned cute! Researchers from the U.S. and China announced earlier this month that they had found fossils of tiny prehistoric monkeys. Each critter was about the size of a human thumb. The discovery of the 45 million-year-old foot bones of two teensy species was reported in the science journal Nature. One set of bones belongs to the tiniest known primate. The other species appears to be an important link between different kinds of primates. Markings on some of the bones suggest that prehistoric owls liked to swoop down and munch on the little monkeys.
The yet unnamed tiniest primate weighed about as much as 10 paper clips. Its bones are identifiable only to experts--each bone is about the size of a grain of rice. "These are the smallest primates ever discovered, alive or extinct," said paleontologist Dan Gebo of Northern Illinois University, who led the research team.
The larger of the two new species was still a midget compared to modern primates. Eosimias sinensis, or dawn monkey from China, weighed no more than a handful of peanuts, but it appears to be a major find.
Most scientists believe animal species change over thousands of years, transforming into new species as they adapt to changes in their environment. According to this theory, known as evolution, walking primates--like apes and humans--developed from tree-climbing primates. Eosimias seems to have appeared just as this change was occurring. Its foot bones have features of both climbers and walkers, says Gebo.
Both sets of fossils come from a rich limestone bed in China that was a rain forest when the monkeys scampered there. So far, the team has studied only 10% of the fossils. What big secrets are buried in the rest of these dainty bones?