Think Croydon. Think riots, concrete, knife crime. Think
Leona Lewis. Croydon doesn’t get a good press. Which is why the discovery of a
unique, fossilised primate in said cement-fest is, I feel, worthy of a mention.
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| Fossilised teeth suggest the Croydon primate ate fruit and insects |
Last year, palaeontologist Jerry Hooker from London’s
Natural History Museum, described the fossilised remains of primitive primate found in
Park Hill, not far from Croydon’s IKEA. Now, to be fair, Croydon has its fair
share of primitive primates, but this one was an altogether different beast, preferring as it did, fruit to Bacardi Breezers.
The fossil comprised just one lower jaw bone with five
tiny teeth. From this, and the age of the rock, Hooker surmised the gnashers
belonged to a primitive primate that lived some 55 million years ago. A new
species, Melaneremia schrevei was
probably a distant relative of modern-day tarsiers - pointy-eared Yoda
lookalikes that live in the islands of Southeast Asia.
It would have had large, forward-facing eyes and grasping
hands and feet with nails instead of claws – features shared by us humans and
all other living primates. So the fossil is special because it helps explain how
we came to acquire some of our quintessentially primate features.
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| M. schrevei - distantly related to tarsiers |
The tiny Croydon primate lived in a time long before the Tramlink,
the Whitgift Shopping Centre and Crystal Palace FC, when south London was
covered in dense semi-tropical forest. It probably hung out in
these trees, using its grasping digits to move around the fine, outer branches,
grabbing and feasting upon the flowers, leaf buds and insects it would have
found there.
Hooker discovered the specimen in a bucketful of rock,
clawed by JCB from a dis-used railway cutting that was widened to create the
Croydon Tramlink in 1998. The site was originally excavated in 1883, when
Victorian fossil hunters found bones from an extinct species of flightless bird (Gastornis) and a large hippopotamus-like
mammal (Coryphodon).
A member of the omomyid family, M. schrevei and its relatives diversified and flourished during the
Eocene period, from 55 to 34 million years ago. But by the end of this time,
they were extinct – out-competed by the first monkeys, who went on to evolve
into the primates we see living in Croydon today.
Want to find out more about how we evolved the way we did - take a look at my long read in New Scientist: How flower power paved the way for our evolution.
Want to find out more about how we evolved the way we did - take a look at my long read in New Scientist: How flower power paved the way for our evolution.
