Branisella is an extinct genus of New World monkey from the Salla Formation of what is now Bolivia during the Late Oligocene, approximately 26 million years ago (Deseadan), comprising only the species Branisella boliviana. Together with the Peruvian genus Canaanimico, it is the oldest fossil New World monkey discovered.
Branisella is an extinct genus of New World monkey from the Salla Formation of what is now Bolivia during the Late Oligocene, approximately 26 million years ago (Deseadan), comprising only the species Branisella boliviana. Together with the Peruvian genus Canaanimico, it is the oldest fossil New World monkey discovered.
== Classification == Within platyrrhines, this taxon has been interpreted as either a stem platyrrhine not related to any of the living forms, or as a primitive callitrichine. One analysis shows it is sister to the clade of all non-pitheciids and should remain incertae sedis. Because, , Branisella is the only South American primate taxon known until the Miocene, more fossils are needed before its phylogenetic position can be clearly established.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).