Oligocene anthropoids

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Oligocene Anthropoids were those anthropoids which existed within the Oligocene epoch between 38 and 23 million years ago.

The Oligocene was a period that included a great deal of climatic and geoligical change. In this period, it is thought that North America and Europe separated and became there own, distinct continents. Also, in this time, India drifted in Asia, the Great Rift Valley was formed, and a cooling trend began in the Northern Hemisphere where primates disappeared.

The general knowledge base on the Oligocene Anthropoids comes from fossils found in Egypt's Fayum deposits. This area is currently a desert but was thought to be a rain forest about 35 million years ago. The anthropoids living in the Fayum were thought to have eaten fruits and seeds. When compared to prosimians, the Oligocene Anthropoids had larger brains, forward looking eyes, less teeth, and smaller snouts. One family of these anthropoids were the parapithecids. They were very small with similarities to the ramarins and marmosets. Also, it is possible that they were ancestral to the New World monkeys. Another family of these anthropoids was the propliopithecid family. They appeared to be ancestral fo Old World monkeys, apes, and humans. The key similarity between the groups was the teeth. The two groups each had the same dental formula which consisted of two incisors, one canine, two premolars, and three molars. Besides the Fayum, Oligocene Anthropoids' fossils have been discovered in North and West Africa, Arabia, China, Southeast Asia, and North and South America.

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