The Hispaniola monkey (''Antillothrix bernensis'') is an extinct

primate Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...

that was

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

on the island of

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ; es, La Española; Latin and french: Hispaniola; ht, Ispayola; tnq, Ayiti or Quisqueya) is an island in the Caribbean that is part of the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and th ...

, in the present-day

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares wit ...

. The species is thought to have gone extinct around the 16th century. The exact timing and cause of the extinction are unclear, but it is likely related to the settlement of Hispaniola by Europeans after 1492.

Description

Horovitz and MacPhee developed the

hypothesis A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...

, first proposed by MacPhee et al., that all the

Antillean The Antilles (; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Antiy; es, Antillas; french: Antilles; nl, Antillen; ht, Antiy; pap, Antias; Jamaican Patois: ''Antiliiz'') is an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mex ...

monkeys (the others being the two

Cuban monkey ''Paralouatta'' is a platyrrhine genus that currently contains two extinct species of small primates that lived on the island of Cuba. Description ''Paralouatta varonai'' was described from a nearly complete cranium from the late Quaternary ...

species of genus ''Paralouatta'', and the

Jamaican monkey The Jamaican monkey (''Xenothrix mcgregori'') is an extinct species of New World monkey that was endemic to Jamaica. It was first uncovered at Long Mile Cave by Harold Anthony in 1920. Discovery Harold Anthony is responsible for many species ...

, ''Xenothrix mcgregori'') belonged to a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

group linked most closely with the modern genus ''

Callicebus ''Callicebus'' is a genus of monkeys known as titi monkeys. Historically, titis were monogeneric, comprising only the genus ''Callicebus'' Thomas, 1903. Owing to the great diversity found across titi monkey species, a new genus-level taxonomy wa ...

''. They later assigned the Antillean monkeys to the tribe

Xenotrichini Xenotrichini (the Antilles monkeys) is a tribe of extinct primates, which lived on the Greater Antilles as recently as the 16th century. These Caribbean islands no longer contain endemic primates, although the most recently discovered species, t ...

– the

sister group In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

of the tribe Callicebini with extensive anatomical comparisons and by extending their parsimony analysis using PAUP*. They maintained that the monophyly of the Antillean monkeys was still supported in the most parsimonious trees, but in slightly less parsimonious trees, ''Aotus'' appeared to be linked with ''Xenothrix''.

Skull discovery

In July 2009, Walter Pickel found a ''A. bernensis'' skull while diving in underwater caves. The skull was found in the La Jeringa Cave of

Cotubanamá National Park Cotubanamá National Park (formerly ''Parque Nacional del Este'') is located on the lower southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, spanning across the provinces of La Altagracia Province, La Altagracia and La Romana Province, Dominican Repub ...

. The skull, long bones and ribs were recovered by Walter Pickel and Curt Bowen in October 2009 under the supervision of the Dominican Republic and Alfred L. Rosenberger from Brooklyn College. The discovery supported the MacPhee et al. hypothesis of a monophyletic origin of the Antilles monkeys. This 2009 discovery of the skull suggested that these primates were diurnal, due to their relatively smaller ocular orbits.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q844989 †Hispaniola monkey Prehistoric monkeys Mammal extinctions since 1500 Prehistoric mammals of North America Endemic fauna of Hispaniola Mammals of Hispaniola Extinct animals of the Dominican Republic Fossils of the Dominican Republic Mammals of the Dominican Republic Mammals described in 1977

Description

Skull discovery

See also

References