Reappraisal of
Macaca speciosa subfossilis from the Late Pleistocene of Northern Vietnam Based on the Analysis of Cranial AnatomyTsuyoshi Ito, Takeshi D Nishimura, Brigitte Senut, Thomas Koppe, Jacque Treil, Masanaru Takai Jouffroy (1959, Bulletin du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Série 2, 31, 209–216) described
Macaca speciosa subfossilis on the basis of her study of the external anatomy of a nearly complete cranium (PV F1; Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris) found in the Late Pleistocene cave deposits, Thung-Lang, northern Vietnam. While Jouffroy (1959) considered it to belong to an ancestor of Macaca arctoides and/or M. thibetana, Fooden (1990, Journal of Human Evolution, 19, 607–686) reexamined the facial anatomy and assigned it to the extant species M. arctoides. We used computed tomography images to reevaluate the phylogenetic position of
Macaca speciosa subfossilis by comparing the external and internal features of PV F1 with those of the crania of the extant macaque species. PV F1 shows a lower degree of preorbital concavity than
Macaca arctoides, M. assamensis, and M. thibetana, but shares an anteriorly directed malar as seen in the crania of the two former species. The size of the molars of PV F1 falls within a range such that the cranium may be assigned to any of the five species of
Macaca arctoides, M. assamensis, M. thibetana, M.
mulatta, and M. nemestrina. An analysis of the internal structure of the cranium reveals that only PV F1 and the cranium of
Macaca arctoides have a pear-shaped nasal cavity expanding laterally at both the anterior and posterior regions. Such a feature is probably a derived condition in the macaque lineage, suggesting a close relationship between
Macaca speciosa subfossilis and M. arctoides. This finding supports the paleobiological scenario that the members of the
Macaca arctoides lineage diverged from the other members of Asian macaques and became distributed in northern Vietnam as early as the Late Pleistocene. International Journal of Primatology, 30(5), 643-662, 2009 SEP/17/2009
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