''Siamoadapis'' is an extinct genus of

adapiform Adapiformes is a group of early primates. Adapiforms radiated throughout much of the northern continental mass (now Europe, Asia and North America), reaching as far south as northern Africa and tropical Asia. They existed from the Eocene to the M ...

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 ...

. Remains of its only known species, ''Siamoadapis maemohensis'', were found in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

. The

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s were discovered in the lignite layer of a coal mine in Mae Mo district,

Lampang Province Lampang ( th, ลำปาง, ; Northern Thai: ) is one of Thailand's seventy-six provinces (''changwat''), lies in upper northern Thailand. The old name of Lampang was ''Khelang Nakhon''. Geography Lampang is in the broad river valley of the ...

, northern Thailand, from which it also received its scientific

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

name. Four lower jaws with teeth were unearthed by a joint team of Thai and French geologists in 2004. It was dated to be 13.1 to 13.3 million years old, and described in 2007 by a team led by geologist Yaowalak Chaimanee (เยาวลักษณ์ ชัยมณี) from the Department of Mineral Resources, Thailand. The animal was a very small primate, with a body length of 15 centimetres and estimated to have weighted 500

gram The gram (originally gramme; SI unit symbol g) is a Physical unit, unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one one thousandth of a kilogram. Originally defined as of 1795 as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure wate ...

s. Distinct for the species is the small size and differences in the teething compared to other

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first 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 means "less recen ...

sivaladapids.

References

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q764107 Fossil taxa described in 2007 Miocene primates of Asia Prehistoric monotypic mammal genera Prehistoric strepsirrhines Prehistoric primate genera