Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
Today we have our first fossil primate.
Infraorder: Catarrhini
Family: Cercopithecidae
Subfamily: Colobinae
Genus: Mesopithecus
Species: Mesopithecus pentelici, M. monspessulanus
The above is a picture of the skull of M. pentelici which dates to 11-6 MYA and is found in southern and central Europe and parts of Iran and Afghanistan. Cranially and dentally Mesopithecus is like most colobines (except it has a fairly long face, per Conroy although Fleagle says it has a short face - to me it looks kind of longish). Mesopithecus has large eye orbits, a wide interorbital distance and a narrow nasal opening. The incisors are relatively small and the molars are high crowned. Postcranially, it's skeleton is more robust and macaquelike (but it does have a long tail). Both species were sexually dimorphic. All things considered, Mesopithecus was terrestrial and folivorous (although M. monspessulanus lived in a more woodland environment). Mesopithecus pentelici was the larger of the two species...
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Comments
My, what big teeth he had.
Posted by: Veronica | August 11, 2006 8:19 PM
Yeah, the canines do seem a bit robust...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | August 11, 2006 10:07 PM