''Kamoyapithecus'' ('Kamoya' + Greek - “ape”) was a primate that lived in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

during the late

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...

period, about 24.2-27.5 million years ago. First found in 1948 as part of a

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

expedition, it was at first thought to be under a form of ''

Proconsul A proconsul was an official of ancient Rome who acted on behalf of a consul. A proconsul was typically a former consul. The term is also used in recent history for officials with delegated authority. In the Roman Republic, military command, or ' ...

'' by C.T. Madden in 1980, but after a re-examination by

Meave Leakey Meave G. Leakey (born Meave Epps; 28 July 1942) is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has ...

and associates later, the fossils were moved under a new genus ''Kamoyapithecus'', named after the renowned fossil finder

Kamoya Kimeu Kamoya Kimeu (1938 – 20 July 2022) was a Kenyan paleontologist and curator, whose contributions to the field of paleoanthropology were recognised with the National Geographic Society's LaGorce Medal and with an honorary doctorate of science deg ...

. The genus is represented by only one species, ''K. hamiltoni''.

Morphology

''Kamoyapithecus'' is known exclusively by its

teeth A tooth ( : teeth) is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, tear ...

and

jaw The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term ''jaws'' is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serv ...

s. The type specimen, KNM-LS 7, was a right

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The t ...

ry jaw fragment found during the expedition in 1948. Through this fossil as well as more recent fragments of

mandible In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower tooth, teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movabl ...

s and teeth, it has been found that ''Kamoyapithecus'' had very large and robust canines. The canines appear to have a distinctive tip that links ''Kamoyapithecus'' with hominoid genus ''Proconsul''. Its teeth also have been found through plane film

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

to not be thickly enamelled. This suggests that ''Kamoyapithecus'' had more emphasis on foods that did not involve heavy wearing, such as soft fruits, nuts and seeds. This would have been well-placed in the Late-Oligocene in Africa, when forests covered a lot of the land. Similar affinities with the jaw fragments have been seen with ''

Afropithecus ''Afropithecus'' is a genus of Miocene hominoid with the sole species ''Afropithecus turkanensis'', it was excavated from a small site near Lake Turkana called Kalodirr in northern Kenya in 1986 and named by Richard Leakey and Meave Leakey. ...

'', ''

'', and the ''

Morotopithecus ''Morotopithecus'' is a species of fossil ape discovered in Miocene-age deposits of Moroto, Uganda. The phylogenetic status of ''Morotopithecus bishopi'' is debated to the extent that it challenges established views on the connection between M ...

'', but nothing definitive can be stated as to the relationship between these genera and ''Kamoyapithecus'' as the fossil material is very fragmentary.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q20672244, from2=Q2071046 Prehistoric apes Oligocene primates †Kamoyapithecus Prehistoric primate genera Fossil taxa described in 1995 Oligocene mammals of Africa