BEIJING, Jan. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Four Chinese paleontologists recently announced in Nature magazine that they had discovered a skull and the jawbones of the oldest, well-preserved primate fossil unearthed in Asia.

    They are "the best evidence of the presence of early primates" on the continent, and that "raises the tantalizing possibility that remote human ancestors might have originated in Asia," the Chicago-based Field Museum announced in a news release.

¡¡  Chinese media called the discovery a "unique gift" just before the Year of the Monkey, which will begin with the Chinese Lunar New Year on Thursday (January 22).

    But for Ni Xijun and the research team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Palaeoanthropology (IVPP), affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the discovery marked only a small, though significant, step in their tortuous academic journey.

    Their research is now funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and their work has been listed as one of the major basic research projects of the Ministry of Sciences and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

    They hope their work will help satisfy people's curiosity about the origin and evolution of our distant ancestors -- euprimates, or primates of modern aspect.

    Better still, they hope to determine how these prehistoric cousins lived.

    "We discussed some possibilities in our paper (published in Nature magazine), but there are still so many unknowns," Ni said in a telephone interview with China Daily.

    Ni is currently conducting research in New York with the American Museum of Natural History. ¡¡

¡¡¡¡Possibilities

    The skull and jawbones are very small, roughly 2.5 centimeters in length. They were discovered in the upper section of the Lingcha Formation, in Central China's Hunan Province.

    The team members have determined the bones are 55 million years old, as the fossils were from the geological stratum identified by geologists and determined by modern technologies -- such as palaeomagnetic and chemostratigraphical studies -- as belonging to the Eocene Epoch, which extended roughly from 55 million to 34 million years ago.

    The skull indicates the animal had a big brain and round forehead. Its eye sockets, each with a bony ring, indicate the primate had binocular vision.

    "It had a very small body, even smaller than the smallest primate today, the mouse lemur in Madagascar," Li Chuankui, one of the co-authors, told China Daily while showing the writer the small skull of a modern-day tarsier, which was a little less than 3 centimeters long.

    "We estimate it weighed 28 grams (about 1 ounce)," added Li.

    Among the finds, the lower jaw and the upper dentitions were nearly complete. After examining both the upper and lower tooth rows, the researchers were able to determine, at least initially, that it might have eaten small insects.

    Most of the early euprimates are known only from isolated teeth or jaw fragments, found in North America and Europe.

    The researchers discovered the teeth of Chinese specimens were "closely similar" to those of the earliest primates, with the Latin name Teilhardina belgica, found in Europe.

    By comparing the jawbones and teeth with those found in Europe and North America, the researchers concluded the most recent discovery appears to be just as old as the oldest primates found so far, in North America and Europe.

    Giving it the Latin name Teilhardina asiatica, the IVPP palaeontologists determined the fossil to be the oldest primate ever found in Asia.

    Ancient animal world