Nacholapithecus and its importance for understanding hominoid evolution

@article{Nakatsukasa2009NacholapithecusAI,
  title={Nacholapithecus and its importance for understanding hominoid evolution},
  author={Masato Nakatsukasa and Yutaka Kunimatsu},
  journal={Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues},
  year={2009},
  volume={18},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:84530387}
}
Information is provided on the anatomy and adaptations of N. kerioi as well as on the site of Nachola, and how the current knowledge can be incorporated into scenarios of hominoid evolution.
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84 Citations

New femoral remains of Nacholapithecus kerioi: Implications for intraspecific variation and Miocene hominoid evolution.

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Hind limb of the Nacholapithecus kerioi holotype and implications for its positional behavior

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Carpal bones of Nacholapithecus kerioi, a Middle Miocene Hominoid From Northern Kenya.

The carpal anatomy of Nacholapithecus is similar to that of the early Miocene hominoid Proconsul, however, Nacholedepithecus wrist anatomy appears to exhibit slightly more emphasized stability.

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177 References

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The combined evidence suggests that Chororapithecus may be a basal member of the gorilla clade, and that the latter exhibited some amount of adaptive and phyletic diversity at around 10–11 Myr ago.

Nacholapithecus skeleton from the Middle Miocene of Kenya.

Maxillae and associated gnathodental specimens of Nacholapithecus kerioi, a large-bodied hominoid from Nachola, northern Kenya.

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The later discovery and diagnosis of Australopithecus afarensis from Pliocene deposits in Ethiopia and Tanzania tended to further strengthen the argument that an animal like Ramapithecus from East Africa and Indo-Pakistan was ancestral to the earliest undoubted hominids.

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The hipbone remaining the features of quadruped primates, less sitting posture on the trees, no long tail, no pronogarde posture as living cercopithecids, no jumping or leaping on the ground and trees, relatively slow walking.

A new Late Miocene great ape from Kenya and its implications for the origins of African great apes and humans

A new genus of great ape recently discovered from the early Late Miocene of Nakali, Kenya, called N. nakayamai could be close to the last common ancestor of the extant African apes and humans, and the associated primate fauna shows that hominoids and other non-cercopithecoid catarrhines retained higher diversity into the early late Miocene in East Africa than previously recognized.

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The first known fossil ape from the early-middle Miocene of Fejej, Ethiopia, is described here, and a partial ulna from a locality dated by 40Ar/39Ar and paleomagnetic methods to a minimum age of 16.18 MYA appears to have been an arboreal quadruped with substantial forearm rotational mobility.
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