Posted on 05/23/2011 8:35:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Physical anthropologist Chris Kirk has announced the discovery of a previously unknown species of fossil primate, Mescalerolemur horneri, in the Devil's Graveyard badlands of West Texas.
Mescalerolemur lived during the Eocene Epoch about 43 million years ago, and would have most closely resembled a small present-day lemur. Mescalerolemur is a member of an extinct primate group -- the adapiforms -- that were found throughout the Northern Hemisphere in the Eocene. However, just like Mahgarita stevensi, a younger fossil primate found in the same area in 1973, Mescalerolemur is more closely related to Eurasian and African adapiforms than those from North America.
"These Texas primates are unlike any other Eocene primate community that has ever been found in terms of the species that are represented," says Kirk, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin. "The presence of both Mescalerolemur and Mahgarita, which are only found in the Big Bend region of Texas, comes after the more common adapiforms from the Eocene of North America had already become extinct. This is significant because it provides further evidence of faunal interchange between North America and East Asia during the Middle Eocene."
By the end of the Eocene, primates and other tropically adapted species had all but disappeared from North America due to climatic cooling, so Kirk is sampling the last burst of diversity in North American primates. With its lower latitudes and more equable climate, West Texas offered warm-adapted species a greater chance of survival after the cooling began.
(Excerpt) Read more at physorg.com ...
This is Mescalerolemur horneri's partial right lower jaw (scale = 2 mm). Credit: University of Texas at Austin
This is Mescalerolemur horneri's partial upper jaw (in two pieces, at left) and partial lower jaw (at right) (scales = 2 mm). Credit: University of Texas at Austin
Wait!
She got 15% travel bonus by using the Chase Travel card???
Look at those chompers!
Texas Tech students?
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Austin is a blue city, yes?
I am guessing Devil’s Graveyard badlands of West Texas is located in the Big Bend area. Anyone know exactly where it is?
Will this Bush bashing never end?
It’s really not that unusual to find horneri Texans in that area.
Stop with the dirty talk. Oh, sorry.
LOL!
In the opening scenes of the movie "Paris, Texas", actor Harry Dean Stanton wanders across a desolate stretch of Texas' Big Bend country with soaring rock formations like huge tombstones. He is traversing an area called the Devil's Graveyard, and German director Wim Wenders felt it set just the right mood for his morose, prize-winning film.
Located near the Mexican border in a remote area of Brewster County, the Devil's Graveyard is a little-known geologic wonder. The story of exactly how it got its name seems to have been lost, but it's easy to see how someone might have decided to call it that. If the devil were going to set up a graveyard, this spot with towering rock walls like stark monuments and scorching summer heat that sometimes can hit 130 degrees would be ideal.
No shortage of colorful names exists in the Big Bend. The graveyard lies next to Fizzle Flat. In the 1930s a barber named Whistler became a squatter in the graveyard area. The site where he set up an irrigated farm came to be known as Whistler Squat. Reaching the Devil's Graveyard isn't easy. It's situated on private ranch property far off any road. In addition to permission, getting there takes a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a helicopter or a rugged hike. "It's really a day's work to get in there on foot," says George Vose of Alpine.
And the toads, don’t forget them.
Mescalerolemur horneri The horney lemur?
/johnny
(Or maybe it's because they seem to be perpetually shooting the bird.)
Ah yes, the lemur tupperwerii.
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