Fossil Old World monkeys (Primates, Cercopithecidae) from the Pliocene of Dorkovo, Bulgaria

Two colobine species occur at the early Pliocene (MN 14) locality of Dorkovo: Dolichopithecus ruscinensis Deperet, 1889 and Mesopithecus monspessulanus (Gervais, 1849). Such an association is known from at least three other Ruscinian or earliest Villafranchian sites, and at two other localities a cercopithecine taxon joins the two colobines. The large colobine from the Kuchurgan localities of Ukraine has previously been considered either a distinct genus or a separate species of Dolichopithecus, but it is here synomymized with D . ruscinensis; an isolated Kuchurgan molar previously published as a macaque is here tentatively re-identified as a colobine, perhaps M . monspessulanus. No temporal patterning has been observed either for associations among these Pliocene genera or of size change within the two Dorkovo taxa.

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