The

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Pliopithecidae is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

family of

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

catarrhines The parvorder Catarrhini (known commonly as catarrhine monkeys, Old World anthropoids, or Old World monkeys) consists of the Cercopithecoidea and apes (Hominoidea). In 1812, Geoffroy grouped those two groups together and established the name ...

and members of the

Pliopithecoidea Pliopithecoidea is an extinct superfamily of catarrhine primates that inhabited Asia and Europe during the Miocene. Although they were once a widespread and diverse group of primates, the pliopithecoids have no living descendants. History of d ...

superfamily. Their anatomy combined primitive features such as a small braincase, a long snout, and a tail. At the same time, they possessed more advanced features such as

stereoscopic vision Binocular vision is seeing with two eyes, which increases the size of the visual field. If the visual fields of the two eyes overlap, binocular depth can be seen. This allows objects to be recognized more quickly, camouflage to be detected, spa ...

and ape-like teeth and jaws, clearly distinguishing them from

monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes. Thus monkeys, in that sense, co ...

s. Begun and Harrison divide the Pliopithecidae into subfamilies Pliopithecinae and Crouzeliinae.Alt URL
/ref> Dionysopithecinae are sometimes placed here as a subfamily, but Begun & Harrison place them in their own family, the Dionysopithecidae.

Palaeoecology

Pliopithecids had a clear habitat preference for warm and humid habitats.

References

* The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Prehistoric World page 434. Pliopithecoidea Miocene primates Pliocene primates Miocene extinctions Prehistoric apes †Pliopithecidae Prehistoric mammal families {{paleo-primate-stub