Mesopithecus sp.

Pickford, Martin, Gommery, Dominique & Ingicco, Thomas, 2023, Macaque Molar From The Red Crag Formation, Waldringfield, England, Fossil Imprint 79 (1), pp. 26-36 : 32

Mesopithecus sp.

Text-fig. 6

M a t e r i a l. NHMUK PV M9171, left M3/ in light wear.

G e o l o g i c a l c o n t e x t a n d a g e. Redeposited into the Red Crag, England, from a pre-existing deposit (precise locality unknown). The age is uncertain but possibly Late Miocene or Early Pliocene.

D e s c r i p t i o n. The colobine upper molar from the

Red Crag is dark brown, with a glossy surface and has been rolled and polished, like most of the mammalian teeth from the deposit. The tooth is quadricuspidate, with the four main cusps arranged in two transverse lophs. There is a small low basal pillar at the lingual end of the median transverse valley and a low talon cusp (distoconule) at the distal end, in the midline of the tooth, indicating that the specimen is an M3/. The buccal and lingual notches are mesiodistally wide and occlusally deep, and the floor of the median transverse valley is slightly above the cervix. The roots have been abraded off.

Wear has advanced to the stage where small dentine lakes are exposed at the apices of the four main cusps, as well as the apex of the distoconule. This signifies a fully adult status, but not an aged individual.

The mesio-distal length of the tooth is 7.7 mm, the breadth of the mesial loph is 7.2 mm and that of the distal loph is 6.4 mm (the original measurements prior to abrasion and polishing would have been slightly greater than these figures).

D i s c u s s i o n. This upper third molar from the Red Crag ( Text-fig. 6 ) was attributed to? Mesopithecus monspessulanus by Delson (1973) but we prefer to leave it in open nomenclature as Mesopithecus sp.

Figures

Text-fig. 6. NHMUK PV M 9171, left M3/ of Mesopithecus sp. from the Red Crag, East Anglia, England. a: stereo occlusal view; b: distal view; c: lingual view; d: buccal view; e: mesial view.