Almost 20 years on from its headline - name uncovering as the most ancient Old World monkey skull ever key out , the famed 15 - million - year - old fogy has made the newsworthiness once again .
Using a combination of sophisticated imaging techniques , scientist have managed to rebuild the specimen ’s brain , which revealed someunexpected features . Not only was it far smaller than anticipated , but it was surprisingly wrinkly ; importantly more sothan would have been expected for its modest size .
That ’s an exciting discovery , because it add weight to the mind that size does not necessarily have to evolve before complexness when it comes to the brains of primate , imply the two can evolve independently . The results have been print inNature Communications(open access ) .
Old World rapscallion , as the name suggest , are those from the Old World , meaning Africa and Asia . This particular specimen , go toVictoriapithecus , holds great scientific importance because it ’s the only complete skull that scientist have so far managed to find for early cercopithecoids , the chemical group represent the Old World monkeys . It ’s also the old , and fossils from this period are extremely scarce , so it ’s key to our apprehension of how their mastermind changed over time .
evidently , the brain is no longer inside this 15 - million - year - old skull , but scientists can bring in a decent idea of what it look like by creating 3D models with the use of 10 - ray imagery and CT CAT scan . After doing so , scientist were also able to forecast its mental capacity volume , which was found to be a modest 36 cubic cm . That ’s less than half the book of those belong to modern - mean solar day mintage of a standardized dead body size .
But size is not everything ; the computer architecture was astonishingly complex , displaying a eminent level of folding and wrinkling . Furthermore , the country involved in the perception of spirit – the olfactory electric-light bulb – was importantly big than anticipated .
“ It probably had a better sense of smell than many monkeys and ape survive today , ” study author Lauren Gonzales from Duke University said in astatement .
“ In live higher primates you regain the antonym : the brain is very big , and the olfactory bulb is very small , presumably because as their vision got well their sense of smell start worse . But instead of a tradeoff between smell and sight , Victoriapithecusmight have retain both capabilities , ” she sum .
What is also intriguing is that its combination of small sizing and wrinkled computer architecture suggest that , at least for this offset of the primate family tree , complexity may have come before expanding upon , which is the black eye of what is in general believed to have occurred in our own filiation .
