Saadanius hijazensis Mya Help Date Monkey Ape Split

[RichTravsky]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20obmonkey.html?_r=1
...
Eactly when the split happened is a matter of debate.

A primate skull unearthed outside of Mecca in Saudi Arabia is the closest
common ancestor to apes and Old World monkeys, researchers say, and helps
date the split. Sediment records indicate that the fossil is 25 million to
29 million years old, making 24 million to 29 million years ago the window
in which the monkey-ape split may have occurred. The ape and human lineages
split later.

The research appears in the journal Nature.

“It is neither a monkey, nor an ape,” said Iyad Zalmout a paleontologist at
the University of Michigan and the study’s lead author. “You have an
intermediate primate that tells you a story about Old World monkeys and apes.”

Based on the skull, the primate was medium-sized and weighed about 30 pounds
to 40 pounds. It had broad upper molars and a long, baboonlike snout.

A previous estimate, made with DNA samples of living primates found that the
split occurred earlier, 34.5 million to 29.2 million years ago. There is
however, no fossil evidence to support this.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7304/full/nature09094.html