Ramapithecus

Ramapithecus is an extinct Miocene-epoch primate whose existence was first reconstructed from the found remains of a two-inch piece of a jawbone, together with four teeth. The jawbone was found in the Siwalik Hills of northern India by G.E. Lewis in the 1930s. At the time it was estimated to be 14 million years old, and was postulated to represent a progenitor species of the Homo genus, and therefore of modern humans (Homo sapiens). Further evidence has now predominantly discarded this theory, and the species is not considered to be a hominid in the strictest sense.

The renowned paleontologist Richard Leakey later found another lower jawbone, which he named Bramapithecus. When this was compared with the jawbone of Ramapithecus and they were found to be similar, Elwyn Simons put forward the idea that these two finds were remains of the same species.

These combined finds were compared with orangutan and Human jawbones. Many in the scientific community (led chiefly by Simons and David Pilbeam) championed the idea that Ramapithecus was an ancestor of all true hominids, and many publications from the 1960s onwards stated this relationship. However in 1981, after other comparisons made with the jawbones of baboons and the further discoveries of more-complete Ramapithecus remains in Turkey and Pakistan, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the theory that this creature was a distant human ancestor. Current thinking places the possible Ramapithecus species as species of Sivapithecus, an ancestor of the orangutan.

The Science Digest April 1981 was quoted to say:

"A reinterpretation of this jaw now suggests that Ramapithecus was an ancestor of neither modern humans or modern apes. Instead Pilbeam himself thinks it represents a third lineage that has no living descendants"

D.T. Gish ("Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record", 1986, p140) notes:

"David Pilbeam, formerly of Yale and now at Harvard University, Elwyn Simons, now of Duke University, two of the leading paleoanthropologists in the U.S., and others had in recent years strongly championed Ramapithecus as an early hominid, a creature in the direct line leading to man. (Simons E. L., Ann. N. Y. Acad. of Sci, 1969, 167:319; Simons E. L., Sci. Amer, 1964,. 211(1):50; Pilbeam D. R., Nature, 1968, 219:1335; Simons E. L. & Pilbeam D. R., Science, 1971, 173:23). During that time it was frequently stated in the anthropological literature and textbooks that there was general agreement that Ramapithecus and related fossils (referred to as ramapithecids) were ancestral to all true hominids, including Man. Today, in the light of additional material that has been discovered, most anthropologists have discarded Ramapithecus as a hominid. He is no longer considered to have been a creature in the line leading to man."

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