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Monkeylike Animals Once Lived in the Arctic, New Fossils Show

Monkeylike Animals Once Lived in the Arctic, New Fossils Show

Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic is a treeless, rocky and bitterly cold wilderness, with large parts covered by thick glaciers. But some 52 million years ago it had dense forests and a steamier climate more like present-day Savannah, Ga. And now a fossil finding reveals it was home to two newly identified species of primatelike mammals, researchers reported on Wednesday in PLOS ONE. These animals’ success in colonizing the rapidly warming Arctic of the past could help scientists better understand how species might shift amid the current, human-caused climate emergency.

The fossils date from early in the Eocene epoch, when Earth was home to ancient relatives of many modern mammals, including tapirs, hippopotamuses and humans. One of our own long-lost family members from this time is the now extinct genus Ignacius, the subject of the new study. “We still don’t know exactly where” Ignacius fits in relation to modern primates, says the study’s lead author Kristen Miller, a University of Kansas evolutionary biologist. But scientists know these creatures fall somewhere within the broader group that includes primates and primatelike animals such as flying lemurs. In Miller’s artistic depiction of one example of Ignacius—the first ever made for the genus—you’d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a squirrel.

Most Ignacius species lived in the middle latitudes, such as what is now the contiguous U.S. The two species described by Miller and her colleagues are the first ever found in the Arctic. Specimens of the mammals, now dubbed Ignacius mckennai and Ignacius dawsonae, were originally collected in the 1970s from Ellesmere Island by pioneering paleontologist Mary Dawson. But they were not formally described or understood to be undiscovered species until now.

A glacier on Ellesmere Island, part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Credit: Ruben Ramos/Getty Images

The fossils Miller and her colleagues used in their study include many teeth and some jawbones but unfortunately no complete skeletons. Still, it’s clear that I. mckennai and I. dawsonae evolved traits that were not seen in their lower-latitude cousins. These differences helped the two species cope with a warmer but still uniquely challenging Arctic environment, says study co-author Christopher Beard, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Kansas. The adaptations include teeth with craggy surfaces, “like if you took a…

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