A one - million - year - sure-enough fossil shinbone bone recovered from limestone rocks in an subaquatic cave belonged to an extinct monkey calledAntillothrix bernensis . This Dominican Republic native remained comparatively unaltered for over a million years , agree to new findings write in theJournal of Human Evolution .
The dodo shin bone off-white ( or tibia ) was discovered a few years ago in the Dominican province of Altagracia on the big island of Hispaniola . Because U immobilise in stone crumble to take shape thorium and lead , University of Melbourne’sRobyn Pickeringand co-worker were able to go steady the fogey by measuring the amount of U , atomic number 90 and lead present in the limestone rocks it was imbed in . The shinbone was 1.32 million years erstwhile , give or take 110,000 years .
Then , using a technique know as three - dimensional geometric morphometrics , the team confirm that the fogey tibia does indeed belong to to the Dominican primateAntillothrix bernensis . After model the shape of the leg , they were able to reconstruct how the imp moved around in its environment , and this allow them to equate it with previously described fossils . This Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree - dwelling monkey was about the sizing of a small cat , and its dieting mainly consisted of fruits and leave of absence . Even though the species was first described in 1977 , researchers knew very small about it until now .
Other morphologically consistent material has all been dated to within the last 10,000 age , hint the species changed little in over a million years . " Many time when a long - lived species is discovered , there is a shift in its morphology over sentence , " study co - authorMelissa Tallmanof Grand Valley State University said in astatement . " For these prelate , at least in the shinbone , they remained remarkably stable morphologically . They obviously conform to their island environment in such a room that was flexible enough that it allowed them to persist for more than one million eld . ” In fact , these scallywag were likely still around when humans first colonized the Caribbean ’s Greater Antilles .
