DURHAM, N.C., Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Scientists from the United States and India say they've found tiny fossilized teeth that might be the oldest Asian remains of anthropoids ever found.
The Duke University and Indian Institute of Technology researchers said the teeth -- 0.009 square inch in size -- were discovered in an open pit mine in western India. Duke Professor Richard Kay, the study's corresponding author, said the early anthropoids -- the primate lineage of today's monkeys, apes and humans -- probably weighed no more than two or three ounces.
Previous fossil evidence shows primates living in North America, Europe and Asia at least 55 million years ago, Kay said. But, until now, the fossil record of anthropoid primates extended back only 45 million years.
"We're going back almost 10 million years before any previously described Asian anthropoid," said study co-author Blythe Williams, a Duke visiting associate professor of evolutionary anthropology.
The study that included Sunil Bajpai and Debasis Das of the Indian Institute of Technology, Vivesh Kapur of Chandigarh, India, and B.N. Tiwari of India's Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology appears in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
