Parapithecidae

Parapithecidae
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Suborder:	Haplorhini
Infraorder:	Simiiformes
Superfamily:	†Parapithecoidea
Family:	†Parapithecidae Schlosser, 1911
Genera
See text

Parapithecidae is an now extinct family of primates which lived in the Eocene and Oligocene periods in Egypt. Eocene fossils from Myanmar are sometimes included in the family in addition. They showed certain similarities in dentition to Condylarthra, but had short faces and jaws shaped like those of tarsiers. They are part of the superfamily Parapithecoidea, perhaps equally related to Ceboidea and Cercopithecoidea plus Hominoidea - but the placement of Parapithecoidea is substantially uncertain.

The most commonly found fossil species of parapithecid is Apidium phiomense, found like many of the species in the Jebel Qatrani Formation in Egypt. It appears to have been arboreal, diurnal and frugivorous and lived in social groups, and its postcranial skeleton is similar to that of extant species of pronograde leapers, indicating its likely form of locomotion.^[1]

Fossil evidence presented in 2020 suggests a parapithecid rafted across the Atlantic in the Paleogene and at least briefly colonized South America. Ucayalipithecus remains dating from the Early Oligocene of Amazonian Peru are deeply nested within the Parapithecidae, and have dental features markedly different from those of platyrrhines. Qatrania wingi of lower Oligocene Fayum deposits is considered the closest known relative of Ucayalipithecus.^[2] The absence of later finds from this group in South America indicates they were outcompeted by platyrrhines, which descend from a parallel anthropoid colonization of South America.