Protopithecus

Protopithecus is an extinct genus of large New World monkey that lived during the Pleistocene. Fossils have been found in the Toca da Boa Vista cave of Brazil, as well as other locales in the country. Fossils of another large, but less robust ateline monkey, Caipora, were also discovered in Toca da Boa Vista.

== History == Fossils of primates from the New World were unknown for many years despite the large quantities of megafauna fossils that had been found by Europeans since the 1700s. In July 1836, a left proximal femur (UZM 1623) and a right distal humerus (UZM 3530) were collected by Danish paleontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund, who is commonly hailed as the founder of Brazilian paleontology, from the limestone cave of Lapo de Periperi. Lapo de Periperi is part of the cave networks of Lagoa Santa, Brazil that bear many fossils dating to the Late Pleistocene - Early Holocene. The humerus and femur were both found in the same cavern but not the exact same site, however they still are from the same individual. These two fragmentary fossils were originally described by Lund in a letter dated to November 16, 1837, but it was not formally described until it was published in a Danish journal in 1838. It was dubbed Protopithecus brasiliensis, the first of four fossil primates that Lund would name based on Lagoa Santa fossils. Lund recognized that the taxon was a platyrrhine monkey, despite their large size. The description was then republished in several other European journals in 1839 and ‘40, even being mentioned in British naturalist Charles Darwin’s landmark publication On the Origin of Species. The original description of Protopithecus was brief, but a monograph by Herluf Winge in 1895 expanded it and allocated a cervical vertebra, caudal vertebra, proximal phalanx, middle phalanx, and a metatarsal. The assignment of these fossils is dubious, as they are from smaller individuals and different caverns. Winge also placed Protopithecus brasiliensis into the genus Eriodes (now Brachyteles) based on the belief that the fossils were indistinguishable from those of existing spider monkeys except for their size. Due to this, the fossils mostly faded into obscurity for over a century. Another species of Protopithecus, P. bonariensis, was erected for isolated incisors that had been collected from deposits further south in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The species was described by French paleontologist Paul Gervais and Argentine paleontologist Florentino Ameghino, but the fossils were not catalogued, illustrated, or described in detail making the species a nomen nudum. Doubts over whether the fossils even belonged to Protopithecus have also been raised, as the fossils come from Argentina and were likely lumped into the genus.