''Kamoyapithecus'' ('Kamoya' + Greek - “ape”) was a primate that lived in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

during the late

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch (geology), epoch of the Paleogene Geologic time scale, Period that extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that defin ...

period, about 27.5-24.2 million years ago. First found in 1948 as part of a

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

expedition, it was at first thought to be under a form of ''

Proconsul A proconsul was an official of ancient Rome who acted on behalf of a Roman consul, consul. A proconsul was typically a former consul. The term is also used in recent history for officials with delegated authority. In the Roman Republic, military ...

'' by C.T. Madden in 1980, but after a re-examination by

Meave Leakey Meave G. Leakey (born Meave Epps; 28 July 1942) is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has ...

and associates later, the fossils were moved under a new genus ''Kamoyapithecus'', named after the renowned fossil finder

Kamoya Kimeu Kamoya Kimeu (1938 – 20 July 2022) was a Kenyan paleontologist and curator, whose contributions to the field of paleoanthropology were recognised with the National Geographic Society's LaGorce Medal and with an honorary doctorate of science deg ...

. The genus is represented by only one species, ''K. hamiltoni''.

Morphology

''Kamoyapithecus'' is known exclusively by its teeth and jaws. The type specimen, KNM-LS 7, was a right

maxilla In vertebrates, the maxilla (: maxillae ) is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The two maxil ...

ry jaw fragment found during the expedition in 1948. Through this fossil as well as more recent fragments of

mandible In jawed vertebrates, the mandible (from the Latin ''mandibula'', 'for chewing'), lower jaw, or jawbone is a bone that makes up the lowerand typically more mobilecomponent of the mouth (the upper jaw being known as the maxilla). The jawbone i ...

s and teeth, it has been found that ''Kamoyapithecus'' had very large and robust canines. The canines appear to have a distinctive tip that links ''Kamoyapithecus'' with hominoid genus ''Proconsul''. Its teeth also have been found through plane film X-ray to not be thickly enamelled. This suggests that ''Kamoyapithecus'' had more emphasis on foods that did not involve heavy wearing, such as soft fruits, nuts and seeds. This would have been well-placed in the Late-Oligocene in Africa, when forests covered a lot of the land. Similar affinities with the jaw fragments have been seen with ''

Afropithecus ''Afropithecus'' is a genus of Miocene hominoid with the sole species ''Afropithecus turkanensis'', it was excavated from a small site near Lake Turkana called Kalodirr in northern Kenya in 1986 and named by Richard Leakey and Meave Leakey. ...

'', ''

'', and the '' Morotopithecus'', but nothing definitive can be stated as to the relationship between these genera and ''Kamoyapithecus'' as the fossil material is very fragmentary.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q20672244, from2=Q2071046 Prehistoric apes Oligocene primates Monotypic prehistoric primate genera Fossil taxa described in 1995 Oligocene mammals of Africa