Mercedes Gutierrez:
      Faunal Interchange between Africa and Eurasia

I am interested in studying the faunal interchange between Africa and Eurasia around the Oligocene-Miocene boundary, and specifically on understanding the emergence of the first ape-like catarrhine primates before this faunal interchange. Major evolutionary changes were occurring at this time as Africa was isolated from Eurasia by the Tethys Sea. The African fauna we know today, including rhinos, giraffes, carnivores, and other familiar groups, is very different from that which was found in much of the continent during the Early Tertiary. The archaic, endemic fauna was dominated by elephants and hyracoids (a group now represented by only two genera), some extinct mammals ( e.g., arsinoitheres and creodonts), primates, and a few rodents. When the landbridge between Africa and Eurasia was formed, the archaic African groups were replaced by northern immigrants. This event is of particular importance because it is during the Early Miocene that we see an important radiation of large-bodied catarrhines in Africa (and ultimately hominoids), but not before.

These Miocene primates are very different from older primates from the Fayum, Egypt. Due to a gap on the fossil record of this age, the connection between these two groups of primates has remained unclear for several decades. Fortunately during the last few years, a few African sites have yielded mammals of Late Oligocene age. Discoveries in Chilga, Ethiopia, have not yet provided primates, but the West Turkana site of Losodok and Nakwai in Northwestern Kenya have yielded the ape-like catarrhine Kamoyapithecus, and a fascinating Late Oligocene fauna bridging those two important temporal and geographic fossil assemblages: earlier North African and later East African faunas.