Sivapithecus 1-2

Miocene. Golden age of hominoids

Climate
Continental shifts. Collision between South Asian plate and Southern Asia was producing Himalayan plateau. Miocene considerable warmer than proceeding oligocene.

19 million years ago Arabian plate connected with North East Africa which allowed Migration of animals.

First Fossil in 19 century but complete in 1934. G Edward Lewis. He called it ramapithecus. 

Another find was made in Nepal on the bank of Tinau River, Butwal; a western part of the country in 1932. This find was named "Ramapithecus".

Sivapithecus genus. Ape of Shiwaliks. 

Time
Miocene ape. Fossils range from 12 and 7 million years ago.

Geographic distribution
Lufang valley China.  Turkey 5 skulls. Potwar plateau and Shiwaliks India - teeth and jaw.  Nepal Pakistan. lived in mixed Woodland grassland environment. 

Classification
Primate, hominidae, ponginae. Previously believed as human ancestor but now clear that Much closer to modern orangutan.

Species
S. parvada S. punjabicus S. sivalensis

Physical features

Debates




Ramapithecus. Miocene. 

Ramapithecusfossil primate dating from the Middle and Late Miocene epochs (about 16.6 million to 5.3 million years ago). For a time in the 1960s and ’70s, Ramapithecus was thought to be a distinct genus that was the first direct ancestor of modern humans (Homo sapiens) before it became regarded as that of the orangutan ancestor Sivapithecus.


The first Ramapithecus fossils (fragments of an upper jaw and some teeth) were discovered in 1932 in fossil deposits in the Siwālik hills of northern India. No significance was attached to those fossils until 1960, when American anthropologist Elwyn Simons of Yale University began studying them and fit the jaw fragments together. On the basis of his observations of the shape of the jaw and of the morphology of the teeth—which he thought were transitional between those of apes and humans—Simons advanced the theory that Ramapithecus represented the first step in the evolutionary divergence of humans from the common hominoid stock that produced modern apes and humans.