Nuciruptor

Nuciruptor; Temporal range: Middle Miocene (Laventan); ~13.5–13.0 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Suborder:	Haplorhini
Infraorder:	Simiiformes
Family:	Pitheciidae
Subfamily:	Pitheciinae
Genus:	†Nuciruptor; Meldrum & Kay 1997
Species
	N. rubricae (type);

Nuciruptor is an extinct genus of New World monkeys from the Middle Miocene (Laventan in the South American land mammal ages; 13.8 to 11.8 Ma). Its remains have been found at the Konzentrat-Lagerstätte of La Venta in the Honda Group of Colombia. The type species is N. rubricae.[1]

Etymology

The name Nuciruptor rubricae is derived from the Latin nuci ("nut") and ruptor meaning "to break".[2] Rubricae refers to the red beds where the fossils have been found.[3]

Description

A lower mandible fossil of Nuciruptor was discovered in the El Cardón redbeds of the Cerro Colorado Member of the Villavieja Formation, Honda Group, just below the San Francisco Sandstone which has been dated to the Laventan, about 12.8 ± 0.2 Ma.[2] From the same locality, fossils of Saimiri annectens were recovered.[4]

Nuciruptor resembles living pitheciins in having elongate, procumbent, and styliform lower incisors with very weak lingual heels. Moreover, as in living pitheciins, the incisors are set in a procumbently oriented mandibular symphysis, and its mandibular corpus deepens appreciably under the molars. At the same time, Nuciruptor does not possess several of the distinctive synapomorphies of extant pitheciins. Nuciruptor remains more primitive than living pitheciins in that no diastema separates its lower incisors from the canine. Its lower canines retain the primitive structure in not having a sharply deﬁned protocristid. P2 is not a robust or high-crowned tooth and does not have a metaconid. Nor are the other premolars molarised by the addition of large talonids.[5] The estimated weight of Nuciruptor was 2,000 grams (4.4 lb).[6] The genus shows similarity with another fossil primate from La Venta, Cebupithecia.[7]

As Cebupithecia, Nuciruptor is thought to be an ancestral saki (Pitheciidae).[8][9]

Habitat

The Honda Group, and more precisely the "Monkey Beds", are the richest site for fossil primates in South America.[10] It has been argued that the monkeys of the Honda Group were living in habitat that was in contact with the Amazon and Orinoco Basins, and that La Venta itself was probably seasonally dry forest.[11]

References

Nuciruptor rubricae in the Paleobiology Database
Kay & Meldrum, 1997, p.409
Kay & Meldrum, 1997, p.410
Kay & Meldrum, 1997, p.437
Kay & Meldrum, 1997, p.421
Silvestro, 2017, p.14
Defler, 2004, p.34
Takai et al., 2001, p.290
Tejedor, 2013, p.28
Rosenberger & Hartwig, 2001, p.3
Lynch Alfaro et al., 2015, p.520

Bibliography

Defler, Thomas. 2004. Historia natural de los primates colombianos, 1–613. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Accessed 2017-09-24.
Kay, Richard F., and D. Jeffrey Meldrum. 1997. The Miocene Fauna of La Venta, Colombia - A new small platyrrhine from the Miocene of Colombia and the phyletic position of the callitrichines, 435–458. Smithsonian Institution Press. Accessed 2017-09-24.
Lynch Alfaro, Jessica W.; Liliana Cortés Ortiz; Anthony Di Fiore, and Jean P. Boubli. 2015. Special issue: Comparative biogeography of Neotropical primates. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 82. 518–529. Accessed 2017-09-24.
Meldrum, D. Jeffrey, and Richard F. Kay. 1997. Nuciruptor rubricae, a New Pitheciin Seed Predator From the Miocene of Colombia. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 102. 407–427. Accessed 2017-09-24.
Rosenberger, Alfred L., and Walter Carl Hartwig. 2001. New World Monkeys. Encyclopedia of Life Sciences _. 1–4. Accessed 2017-09-24.
Silvestro, Daniele; Marcelo F. Tejedor; Martha L. Serrano Serrano; Oriane Loiseau; Victor Rossier; Jonathan Rolland; Alexander Zizka; Alexandre Antonelli, and Nicolas Salamin. 2017. Evolutionary history of New World monkeys revealed by molecular and fossil data. BioRxiv _. 1–32. Accessed 2017-09-24.
Takai, Masanaru; Federico Anaya; Hisashi Suzuki; Nobuo Shigehara, and Takeshi Setoguchi. 2001. A New Platyrrhine from the Middle Miocene of La Venta, Colombia, and the Phyletic Position of Callicebinae. Anthropological Science, Tokyo 109.4. 289–307. Accessed 2017-09-24.
Tejedor, Marcelo F. 2013. Sistemática, evolución y paleobiogeografía de los primates Platyrrhini. Revista del Museo de La Plata 20. 20–39. Accessed 2017-09-24.