| Paralouatta Temporal range: Miocene-Pleistocene |
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|---|---|
| Paralouatta marianae skull | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Family: | Pitheciidae |
| Subfamily: | Callicebinae |
| Tribe: | †Xenotrichini |
| Genus: | †Paralouatta Rivero & Arredondo, 1991 |
| Species | |
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Paralouatta is a platyrrhine genus that currently contains two extinct species of small primates that lived on the island of Cuba.
The Cuban fossil primate, Paralouatta varonai was described from a nearly complete cranium from the late Quaternary in 1991. This cranium and a number of isolated teeth and postcranial bones were found in a cave site in Pinar del Rio Province. The initial description of the cranium included a proposal that Paralouatta varonai was a close Caribbean relative of the extant Alouatta (howler monkeys) of Central and South America,[1] but this taxonomic placement has been called into question with the analysis of the dental remains.[2] Based on shared similarities with the two other Caribbean primates Xenothrix mcgregori and Antillothrix bernensis, MacPhee and Horovitz have proposed that the Caribbean primates are part of a monophyletic radiation which entered the Caribbean at the Oligocene-Miocene boundary. More recent research confirms this assessment and places these three species in the tribe Xenotrichini.[3]
A second species of Paralouatta (P. marianae) has also been described from early Miocene deposits (~18 million years old), and is the largest Neotropic primate known of that epoch.[4]