Amphipithecus

Amphipithecus mogaungensis (Near-Ape of Mogaung) was a primate that live in Late Eocene Myanmar (Primate Adaptation and evolution, p.398). Along with another primate Pondaungia cotteri, both are difficult to categorise within the Order, Primata. What little has come to light suggests that both were well beyond the affinitites of adapids or omomyids. Often referred to as higher primates, Anthropoidea, include humans, monkeys and apes. Deep mandibles and mandibular molars with low, broad crowns suggest they are both anthropoids. More material will need to surface to investigate what these primates are. The teeth also suggest that these were frugivorous primates, with a body mass of between six and ten kilograms.

Discovery

In early 1923, notable fossil prospector, Barnum Brown (famed for discovering the first T. rex skeleton) travelled with his wife Lilian Brown to Yangon, the capital of what was then called Burma (Natural History 10/85). Brown focused his fossil prospection along areas of Pondaung Sandstone. It was in the outskirts of Mogaung town that he identified a mandible with three teeth (Right). He did not recognise the significance of his find until 14 years later, when Edwin Colbert identified the fossil as a new species of primate and the earliest known anthropoid in the world.