Exploring for Paleogene Primates in Bolivia

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The primary objective of this project is to search for sites containing primate fossils from the middle Tertiary in South America. There has long been debate as to the path by which the higher primates appeared in the Old and New World. While there have been significant discoveries in the Old World, knowledge of early higher primate evolution in the Americas is scant. A principle question that remains to be answered is whether prosimian grade primates evolved into a monkey grade independently in the New and Old Worlds or whether this occurred once. In the latter case the last common ancestor of the two would have already have been monkey. The investigators have identified geological deposits in Bolivia which show promise of bearing fossils from this time period. With the assistance of the Bolivian Geological Survey they will search for fossils from this time period.