A Diverse Homonoid Fauna from the Late Middle Pleistocene Breccia Cave of the Tham Khwan Socialist Repubic of Vietnam by Schwartz J.H., Long V.T., Cuong N.L., Kha L.T. & Tattersall I.
July 1994 | ISBN: 9995386429 | Pages: 16 | PDF | 5 MB
The cave of Tham Khuyen in Lang Son Province, northeastern Vietnam, has yielded a large mammalian fauna of probable late middle Pleistocene date. A series of isolated hominoid primate teeth, formerly allocated to the extant orangutan Pongo pygmaeus, has recently been reexamined and found to represent more than one species. These specimens are described in detail in this paper and are analyzed as follows. Some of the teeth are indeed clearly identifiable as those of Pongo pygmaeus, but the majority appear to belong to a species related to the orangutan but not identical with it. A few teeth are distinct from either of the above, both in size and morphology, and are interpreted here as representing a previously undescribed genus and species of a large-bodied hominoid. In addition, a few teeth are regarded as indeterminate at present. With the recognition of this multiplicity of hominoid species at Tham Khuyen, it is evident that the large-bodied hominoid fauna of middle Pleistocene Vietnam was considerably more diverse than formerly supposed, including Gigantopithecus blacki) and Homo sp. in addition to the species noted above.
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