North America's Oldest Primate Fossil

A team of scientists discovered recently North America’s oldest primate fossil! The newly found species seems to have been so small that it fitted in the palm of a hand.

Called Teilhardina magnoliana, the tiny animal is very, very old and scientists have also realized that it was related to similarly aged fossils from Europe, China, as well as from Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin.

"They are very, very primitive relatives of living primates called tarsiers, which live today in Southeast Asia," said Christopher Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum Of Natural history in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Beard and his team discovered the fossils on the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi.

According to recent studies, it seems that Teilhardina magnoliana is 55 million years old. The age of the layer of rock in which scientists found the fossils also stressed on the fact that Teilhardina magnoliana’s fossil might really be North America’s oldest primate fossil.

The newly discovered animal is said to have weighed no more than one ounce. The discovery of its fossils proved that it had migrated from Asia to North America across the Bering land bridge. Then the tiny animal continued its migration to Europe across an Atlantic land bridge, which appeared thousands of years later.