''Propotto'' is an extinct, monotypic

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of early

strepsirrhine Strepsirrhini or Strepsirhini (; ) is a suborder of primates that includes the lemuriform primates, which consist of the lemurs of Madagascar, galagos ("bushbabies") and pottos from Africa, and the lorises from India and southeast Asia. Colle ...

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 ...

from the early

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

of Kenya. It contains one described species, ''Propotto leakeyi''. Although long considered a pteropodid fruit-eating bat after spending a brief sojourn as a prehistoric relative of lorises, recent research shows it to be an extinct relative of the

aye-aye The aye-aye (''Daubentonia madagascariensis'') is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger. It is the world's largest nocturnal primate. ...

Systematics

Simpson (1967) described ''Propotto'' on the basis of mandibles from Early Miocene deposits in Kenya that he regarded as constituting an extinct relative of the extant

potto The pottos are three species of strepsirrhine primate in the genus ''Perodicticus'' of the family Lorisidae. In some English-speaking parts of Africa, they are called "softly-softlys". Etymology The common name "potto" may be from Wolof (a t ...

, hence the genus meaning "before ''Potto''". However, the lorisid classification of ''Propotto'' was questioned by Walker (1969), who argued that it represented a fruit bat of the family Pteropodidae, noting that the second premolar was smaller than those of lorises and that the mandibular corpus was also unlike those of lorisiforms in deepening anteriorly and having a deep masseteric fossa (Simpson accepted Walker's refutation of the lorisid placement of ''Propotto''). Several authors accepted the chiropteran classification of ''Propotto'' (although Butler 1984 did note that ''Propotto'' has an enlarged anterior lower tooth that is relatively larger than the lower canines of pteropodid fruit bats); Butler (1984) placed ''Propotto'' in a new subfamily of Pteropodidae, Propottinae. In a paper published in 2018, the late Gregg Gunnell and his colleagues cast doubt on the pteropodid classification of ''Propotto'', noting that features cited by Walker (1969) to exclude the genus from Lorisidae are also found in the Eocene strepsirrhine '' Plesiopithecus'' from the Fayum Depression, Egypt. For example, they pointed out that the laterally compressed and presumably highly procumbent lower anterior tooth excluded ''Propotto'' from Chiroptera and instead occurs in ''Plesiopithecus'' and the aye-aye. The results of the cladistic analysis of Gunnell et al. (2018) recovered ''Propotto'' as the most basal member of Chiromyiformes, supporting the hypothesis that lemurs migrated to Madagascar in two distinct waves from Africa, perhaps in the late Cenozoic.Gregg F. Gunnell; Doug M. Boyer; Anthony R. Friscia; Steven Heritage; Fredrick Kyalo Manthi; Ellen R. Miller; Hesham M. Sallam; Nancy B. Simmons; Nancy J. Stevens; Erik R. Seiffert (2018). "Fossil lemurs from Egypt and Kenya suggest an African origin for Madagascar's aye-aye". Nature Communications. 9: Article number 3193. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05648-w.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q56280041, from2=Q3392299 Prehistoric strepsirrhines Prehistoric primate genera Miocene primates of Africa Fossil taxa described in 1967