13-million-yr-old tooth found in J&K hills leads to discovery of new ape species in India

NEW DELHI: An international team of researchers has discovered a new

ape species

— ancestor of the modern-day gibbon — which lived in north India 13 million years ago after they stumbled upon a fossilised tooth sticking in the dirt in the hills of Jammu & Kashmir.


After a series of tests and analysis determined that the fossil — a complete lower molar measuring about 7mm in length — belonged to a previously unknown genus and species, researchers named it Kapi ramnagarensis. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday.

“It was like discovering a needle in a haystack,” Rajeev Patnaik, head of department at the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, Panjab University, told TOI. In October 2015, Patnaik along with colleagues from the varsity — supported by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and Science and Engineering Research Board — and researchers from the US were at a site in Ramnagar (Udhampur district) called Sunetar, J&K. A year before, in 2014, a fossilised primate jaw had been found near the site and the team was keen to explore the area.

It was during one of their sojourns that team member and palaeontologist Christopher Gilbert from Hunter College at the City University of New York noticed something glittering in a pile of dirt. The researchers dug it out and knew they had something special at hand.

“Larger fossils are easier to spot but managing to find a fossil so tiny was a matter of pure luck,” said Patnaik. From the shape and size of the specimen, the team guessed that it likely belonged to an unknown gibbon ancestor. “No gibbon fossils had been previously found anywhere from South Asia before,” said Patnaik.

The molar then went through years of rigorous testing in the US. It was photographed and CT-scanned and compared with samples of teeth from living and extinct apes. Tests confirmed that the specimen is the earliest known gibbon fossil, said researchers. “This ape represents the first new hominoid species discovered in Ramnagar in nearly a century,” they wrote in the study. Patnaik is now studying the species’ diet and habitat to know more about the small-bodied ape while the US team would also continue to study the site for ape fossils.

Researchers said the

discovery

of gibbon ancestor in north India also suggests it may have coexisted in the region along with great apes such as orangutan ancestor (Sivapithecus) whose fossils have been discovered at the site. “Knowing that gibbon and orangutan ancestors existed in the same spot together in northern India 13 million years ago, and may have a similar migration history across Asia, is pretty cool,” said Gilbert.

Today, gibbons in India are only found in the northeast. The western hoolock gibbon is found in northeast India while the eastern hoolock gibbon inhabits parts of Arunachal Pradesh. The western hoolock is listed as endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Redlist; the eastern hoolock is listed as vulnerable.

Photo Credit: Chris Gilbert

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