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| Hispaniola monkey Temporal range:Quaternary | |
|---|---|
Extinct (early 1500s[citation needed]) | |
Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Family: | Pitheciidae |
| Subfamily: | Pitheciinae |
| Tribe: | †Xenotrichini |
| Genus: | †Antillothrix MacPhee, Horovitz, Arredondo, & Jimenez Vasquez, 1995 |
| Species: | †A. bernensis |
| Binomial name | |
| †Antillothrix bernensis Rímoli, 1977 | |
| Synonyms | |
| |
TheHispaniola monkey (Antillothrix bernensis) is an extinctprimate that wasendemic on the island ofHispaniola, in the present-dayDominican Republic.The species is thought to have gone extinct around the 16th century. The exact timing and cause of the extinction are unclear, but it is likely related to thesettlement of Hispaniola by Europeans after 1492.[citation needed]
Horovitz and MacPhee[1] developed thehypothesis, first proposed by MacPhee et al.,[2] that all theAntillean monkeys (the others being the twoCuban monkey species of genusParalouatta, and theJamaican monkey,Xenothrix mcgregori) belonged to amonophyletic group linked most closely with the modern genusCallicebus. They later assigned the Antillean monkeys to the tribeXenotrichini[3] – thesister group of the tribeCallicebini with extensive anatomical comparisons and by extending theirparsimony analysis using PAUP*.[4] They maintained that the monophyly of the Antillean monkeys was still supported in the most parsimonious trees, but in slightly less parsimonious trees,Aotus appeared to be linked withXenothrix.
In July 2009, Walter Pickel found aA. bernensis skull while diving in underwater caves. The skull was found in theLa Jeringa Cave ofCotubanamá National Park. The skull, long bones and ribs were recovered by Walter Pickel and Curt Bowen in October 2009 under the supervision of the Dominican Republic and Alfred L. Rosenberger from Brooklyn College. The discovery supported the MacPhee et al. hypothesis of a monophyletic origin of the Antilles monkeys.[5] This 2009 discovery of the skull suggested that these primates were diurnal, due to their relatively smaller ocular orbits.[6]
New specimens recovered in 2018 from Cueva Macho included fourcrania and threemandibles. Both a cranium and mandible exhibited absentwisdom teeth, which is rare in most primates. Though previously, hypotheses regarding smallerrelative brain size than normal andsexual dimorphism had been posited, these new specimens evidence neither of these claims. Instead, the authors posit that Hispaniolan monkeys were "a morphologically variable but monomorphic species."[7]
