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Showing results for tags 'plesiadapidae'.
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Possible Plesiadapidae lower jaw fragment from the Willwood Formation
EvolEd posted a topic in Fossil ID
Hi everyone, I'm a new member and I'd like to share with you a fossil that was purchased several years ago. This is my first attempt to start a topic or post anything (other than an introduction) so I apologize if I upload things oddly as I'm still trying to figure out how to navigate the forum. As mentioned in my introductory post, I'm a former academic that focused on macroevolution, phylogenetics, and speciation, and I'm always fascinated by major evolutionary transitions. I actually wrote a paper on the origin of primates during my undergrad to explore the suite of characteristics that helped primates emerge as a dominant clade. As a result, I spent a great deal of time learning about the muddied "key evolutionary traits" separating Plesiadapiformes from accepted early Primates, namely stereoscopic vision, grasping hands and feet, saltatory locomotion, and the rise of frugivory. So to my surprise, someone was selling a lower jaw fragment of a Plesiadapidae from the Willwood Formation, Wyoming (Late Paleocene-early Eocene). It was apparently vetted as such by someone at a local university and I had no reason to distrust the seller, as it is such an obscure set of creatures by most standards. I had previously purchased two other fossils (i.e. Eohippus/hyracotherium jaw fragment, and an allognathosuchus alligatorid lower jaw) from the same person and they seemed to have solid provenance. I would love if someone could verify that it is in fact a plesiadapid or even I.D. it to the species level if possible. I thought it would be an interesting first post and I'd love to add it to my collections page (if I can figure out how to do that). Thanks so much for any help and/or comments. Cheers Marcus- 20 replies
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