Pierolapithecus catalaunicus

Pierolapithecus catalaunicus is an extinct species of hominoid primate whose first fossils were discovered in December 2002 by workers on a landfill site and a team of Spanish paleoanthropologists. directed by Salvador Moyà-Solà who were in charge of the excavation work from the outset. The only known individual, who lived about 13 million years ago (mid-Miocene), a time scarcely studied, was baptized as "Pau". Its importance lies in the fact that it could be the common ancestor of man and the great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans).

The description of the discovery was first published in the November 19, 2004 issue of the journal Science. The generic name was taken from the location of the discovery in the Catalan municipality of Els Hostalets de Pierola (Barcelona, Spain). The set of fossils were cataloged as IPS 21350.

Finding

On December 5, 2002, while repairing a road in the expansion works of the Can Mata landfill, in Els Hostalets de Pierola, a skull and a dozen teeth of a male anthropoid weighing between 30 and 35 kg appeared by chance of weight between 12 and 13 million years ago that had been eaten by scavengers. The great importance of the discovery resides in the fact that it corresponds to a chronological band of which there are hardly any fossils and that is when the common ancestor of the current great anthropoids must have existed. After the first campaign of excavation of the site between May and July 2003 directed by paleontologist Salvador Moyà-Solà, from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont de Sabadell, and which was visited at the end of June by the legendary F. Clark Howell, co-director of the Human Studies Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley, 40 fossils have been recovered, the analysis of which will not be finished until the end of the year, but the initial analysis highlights that it is an anthropoid that opened the evolutionary path of humanity when beginning to move through the trees in a vertical position, therefore it could be a common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

The remains include the skull, a maxillary fragment, the patella, what appears to be a fragment of the femur, median clavicle, and fragments of the ribs that will make it possible to reconstruct the thorax, a fragment of the pelvis that will help to determine the type of locomotion and bones of the feet and hands that will clarify how it clung to the trees. It is precisely the latter that make us think that it is involved in human evolution, the phalanges of the hands are larger than those of the feet, as occurs in apes that hang from branches, such as orangutans, and unlike of the quadrupedal monkeys.

The anthropoid has been baptized with the name of Pau, a name that in the Catalan language has a double meaning, apart from being the Castilian proper name Pablo, it means Peace, since the anthropoid was given to be known on the dates of the great mobilizations against the Iraq War (Second Gulf War) of April 2003.

Post

On November 19, 2004, the results of the study were published, carried out by the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont in Sabadell, of the fossils recovered from the Barranc de Can Vila 1 site (Hostalets de Pierola, Barcelona) from the December 5, 2002. A new genus and species are named, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus (that is, the Catalan Pierola's monkey), although the recovered specimen, corresponding to a 35 kg male and between 1 and 1.2 m tall, he bears the nickname Pau. Scientists consider this anthropomorph, dated to between 12.5 and 13 million years old, to be possibly a common ancestor of today's great apes, including humans.

“There was little information about the origin of the group that includes today's large anthropomorphs and humans”, according to Salvador Moyà. “It was not known what era the common ancestor was from and what it looked like. The fossil record was so far very scarce and therefore there were contradictory hypotheses. Pau meets the characteristics that could be expected from the common ancestor and the temporal record in which it appeared is appropriate, as it is very close to that proposed by geneticists and molecular biologists. According to Meike Köhler, "while the rest of the primates have the body more similar to a cat, the large anthropomorphs present upright postures and the change for that is clearly seen in the body of Pau."

Although it has appeared in Europe, researchers believe that Pierolapithecus also lived in Africa. «Primates have always been generated on that continent and then they have colonized other territories. We think that Pierolapithecus comes from Africa and we suspect that it came by way of the Near East rather than North Africa.” The present place is quite a wasteland, but in the middle Miocene, 13 million years ago, the area was a dense and very humid tropical forest. To give an idea of the rich fauna that inhabited it, Salvador Moyà said that the same variety could have been observed then as spending a month in the current jungle of Sumatra (Indonesia).

Authors of the species

Salvador Moyà-Solà (Palma de Mallorca, Spain 1955), anthropologist at the Institut de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont de Sabadell dependent on the Diputació de Barcelona 1983-2006, joined in 2006 as a researcher in the Biological Anthropology unit of the Universitat Autonomous of Barcelona (Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona), expert in Miocene primates. Since 2007 he has been director of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP), a foundation created by the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Autonomous University of Barcelona in November 2006.

Meike Köhler (Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany 1954), PhD in Paleontology from the University of Hamburg. She has worked at the Institut de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont and now works at the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP), in the Department of Animal, Plant and Ecology Biology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

David Martínez Alba (in many sources he appears as David M. Alba), a Biology student at the University of Barcelona (UB), has collaborated with the Institut de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont since 1998 and is a member of the research team that has unearthed and described the anthropomorphic Pau.

Isaac Casanovas i Vilar (Canet de Mar, Barcelona 1980), graduated in Geology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). PhD student, he is part of the research team that has brought to light and described Pierolopithecus .

Jordi Galindo i Torres. Member of the company Paleotheria, SCP and of the research team of the Can Vila site in Els Hostalets de Pierola.