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TY - CHAP AU - Ward, S. C. AU - Pilbeam, D. R. ED - Ciochon, Russell L. ED - Corruccini, Robert S. PY - 1983 DA - 1983// TI - Maxillofacial Morphology of Miocene Hominoids from Africa and Indo-Pakistan BT - New Interpretations of Ape and Human Ancestry SP - 211 EP - 238 PB - Springer US CY - Boston, MA AB - The contact of the Afro-Arabian Plate with Eurasia around 17 million years ago (m.y.a.) is associated with profound changes in Miocene faunal communities. At or about this time, a hominoid appeared in East Africa that was anatomically quite different from the Proconsul species complex that had been endemic there for over 6 million years. These differences involved elements of occlusal design, thickness of molar enamel caps, and gnathic buttressing, which showed a general increase in robusticity. By the mid 1970s, this combination of features had come to be regarded as exclusively characteristic of australopithecines or their immediate ancestors. Thus the presence of a hominoid with thick enamel and robust maxillae at Fort Ternan seemed to provide the oldest evidence of hominids (Simons, 1968; Andrews and Tekkaya, 1976; Simons and Pilbeam, 1978). The later discovery and diagnosis of Australopithecus afarensis from Pliocene deposits in Ethiopia and Tanzania (Johanson et al., 1978; Johanson and White, 1979) tended to further strengthen the argument that an animal like Ramapithecus from East Africa and Indo-Pakistan was ancestral to the earliest undoubted hominids. SN - 978-1-4684-8854-8 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8854-8\_8 DO - 10.1007/978-1-4684-8854-8_8 ID - Ward1983 ER -