| Éduoard Lartet
(1801-1871)
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Dryopithecines. In 1856, the French geologist Éduoard Lartet described the remains of an ape he had obtained from Miocene strata at Saint-Gaudens in the Haute Garonne department of southern France. The fossils consisted of a portion of a lower jaw with teeth and the shaft of a humerus. As the remains of oaks are common in the lignite beds in which it was found, Lartet assigned it the generic name of Dryopithecus ("oak-forest ape").
In the years since, the remains of dryopithecines have been recovered from additional sites as widely dispersed as northeastern Spain (Catalonia), Hungary, and China. Proconsul and Kenyapithecus are two dryopithecine primates from the Miocene of eastern equatorial Africa.
In life, an adult dryopithecine weighed about 35 kg (~77 lbs) and had the same dental formula as do modern apes and human beings (2:1:2:3 in both jaws). The thin tooth enamel indicates a probable diet of leaves and fruit. The structure of the shoulder joint suggests these animals used their hands, as well as their feet, in locomotion.
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Cast of original dryopithecine mandible found by Lartet (11.5 mya)
Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. Image: Wikimedia
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References:
Kordos, L., Begun, D. R. 2001. A new cranium of Dryopithecus from Rudabanya, Hungary, Journal of Human Evolution, 41: 689-700.
Lartet, E. 1856. Note sur un grand singe fossile qui se rattache au groupe des singes supérieurs. C. R. Acad. Sci. (Paris) 43: 219-223.
Harrison, T., et al. 1996. A reinterpretation of the taxonomy of Dryopithecus from Vallés-Penedés, Catalonia (Spain), Journal of Human Evolution, 31: 129-141.
Xue, X., Delson, E. 1989. A new species of Dryopithecus from Gansu, China, Chinese Science Bulletin 34: 223-230.
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