Kenyapithecusn.
/ˌkɛnjəˈpɪθᵻkəs/, U.S. /ˌkɛnjəˈpɪθəkəs/ Palaeontology.
An extinct ape, Kenyapithecus wickeri, known from Middle Miocene fossil remains found at Fort Ternan, Kenya, dated to about 14 million years ago, and regarded by some as the ancestor of all great apes. Also: the genus Kenyapithecus itself. Kenyapithecus is sometimes incorporated into the genus Ramapithecus, and it sometimes comprises other species of extinct ape found in East Africa.
ΘΚΠ
the world > animals > mammals > order Primates > suborder Anthropoidea (higher primates) > [noun] > group Catarrhinae (Old World monkey) > member of superfamily Hominoidea (apes and humans) > family Pongidae (ape) > fossil or extinct types
Dryopithecus1862
Sivapithecus1915
Australopithecus1925
Proconsul1933
Ramapithecus1934
Plesianthropus1938
australopithecine1941
australopith1949
Kenyapithecus1961
ramapithecine1972
Afropithecus1986
1961 L. S. B. Leakey in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 4 690 The following is a diagnosis and preliminary description of this new Kenya Lower Pliocene primate. Super-Family Hominoidea. Family Incertae sedis. Genus Kenyapithecus gen. nov... The type of the genus is the new species Kenyapithecus wickeri described below.
1963 Sci. News Let. 9 Mar. 154/2 Kenyapithecus seems to have had the potential of speech.
1996 New Scientist 30 Nov. 16/2 With it were the fossil teeth of prehistoric pigs and a carnivore known as a bear-dog—species whose traces palaeontologists have uncovered alongside those of Kenyapithecus.
2009 M. Firestone Kenya (ed. 7) 23 The fossil beds incorporate that most elusive period of human history between 14 and 4 million years ago when the largely primate Kenyapithecus evolved into our earliest bipedal ancestor Australopithecus afarensis.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2011; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1961