Anthropological and Paleontological Research at the Fossil Primate Sites of the Fayum, Egypt

该项目的研究人员将在埃及进行三个季节的实地考察，随后将在杜克大学和合作实验室对发现的化石进行研究。目的是更多地了解猴子、猿和人类最早的祖先。先前的发现使这里成为世界上最重要的此类研究地点。在预计的季节里，法尤姆地区的遗址将发现许多始新世和渐新世早期灵长类动物的头骨、颌骨和骨骼部分。这些化石大约有3600万年到2600万年的历史。化石来自十几个采石场，很少作为相关的骨骼被发现，因此需要长期的勤奋，通过在那里发现20多种灭绝的灵长类动物的肢骨和头骨来增加知识，这些化石以前是不为人知的，而且往往是没有关联的。其中大多数只存在于上颚和下颚的一部分，因此，还有很多有待发现。非洲似乎是猴类、类人猿和人类经历了大部分历史的大陆，而法尤姆在有关时期的早期拥有非洲唯一连续的沉积物序列。

The researchers in this project will conduct three field seasons in Egypt with subsequent studies on recovered fossils to be carried out at Duke and cooperating laboratories. The objective is to learn more about the earliest forerunners of monkeys, apes and humans. Previous discoveries have made this the world's most important location for such research. During the projected seasons, sites in the Fayum region will yield skulls, jaws, and skeletal parts from many early primates of both Eocene and Oligocene age. These date between about 36 and 26 million years old. Fossils come from a dozen quarries and are seldom recovered as associated skeletons, so that great diligence over long periods of time is required to add knowledge by finding previously unknown and often unassociated limb bones and skulls of the more than twenty extinct primate species that occur there. Most of these are represented only by parts of upper and lower jaws and, hence, much remains to be discovered. Africa appears to be the continent where the group of monkeys, apes and humans experienced most of its history and the Fayum holds the only continuous sequence of deposits in Africa during the early part of the time concerned.