Scientists just found Purgatorius, the world’s oldest primate, lived much farther south than previously known.
The data suggest the tiny critter spread quickly after the asteroid that killed the dinos, migrating southward across the US.
#Paleontology
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New for #NatGeo
A study led by paleontologist and Brooklyn College / @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social Stephen Chester (@purgatoriidae.bsky.social) is shedding light on how the earliest known primate relatives evolved and spread across North America after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Our study on the southernmost occurrence of Purgatorius was published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology! Thanks to all the Brooklyn College undergraduates and DMNS interns who found these needles in a haystack of fossiliferous sediment!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
We had a great time at commencement at Lincoln Center last night! Congratulations to Dr. Jordan Crowell and to all our 2025 CUNY Graduate Center graduates!
Basicranial evidence suggests picrodontid mammals are not stem primates royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Yesterday's senior seminar presentations were excellent!Congratulations to all our graduating seniors!
Congratulations to Nidhi Mahadevan! She received first place in STEM at the 2025 Macaulay Honors College Outstanding Undergraduate Research Awards ceremony last week for her work on Purgatorius lower molars using three-dimensional geometric morphometrics. Well done, Nidhi!
Congratulations to Jordan Crowell @crowelljw.bsky.social on a successful doctoral dissertation defense at the AMNH yesterday!!! A special thank you goes to Eric Delson, Chris Gilbert, and John Wible for serving on his committee!
A photo of the fossilized remains of Prestosuchus on display in the Museum. The animal is quadrupel and low to the ground. It has a dinosaur-like skull.
Meet Prestosuchus chiniquensis. It lived in what’s now Brazil some 210 million years ago. Although it was a large animal with big claws & a huge head with sharp-toothed jaws, it wasn't a dinosaur—it's actually a close relative of crocodylomorphs.
Photo: © AMNH
Happy Fossil Friday! Today I was invited to speak to my son's class about paleontology. He interrupted me when I simply referred to one of my 3D prints as a primate fossil. He wanted me to tell the class the GENUS. He is 2. 😂
I enjoyed the opportunity to present the diamond open access, community owned, PaleoAnthropology journal and discuss the situation at the Journal of Human Evolution at the NYCEP seminar, City University of New York last week!
Thank you to Larissa Swedell for the invitation.
Anthropology + @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social's @purgatoriidae.bsky.social worked with a team of researchers to uncover fascinating new details about Mixodectes pungens, a long-mysterious mammal that roamed North America in the early Paleocene, just after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Our early mammal ancestors had drab boring fur colors.
Why make yourself all bright and shiny when you're only coming out at night, to avoid those huge dinosaurs?
Exciting new research on fossil melanosomes from Matthew Shawkey & team! My thoughts for @popsci.com:
www.popsci.com/science/earl...
Our new paper led by Jordan Crowell on the oldest known plesiadapiform cranium is out! If you're in Baltimore, set your alarm and check out more cool work from our lab at Jordan's 8:15 AM talk on Friday #AABA2025
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A new study by Prof. Stephen Chester uncovered surprising new details about Mixodectes pungens, a long-mysterious mammal that roamed North America just after the extinction of the dinosaurs www.gc.cuny.edu/news/stephen... @purgatoriidae.bsky.social
Mixodectes (foreground) was about three pounds and had an omnivorous diet that included leaves. It appears to have occupied a unique ecological niche in trees shared with smaller plesiadapiforms like Torrejonia wilsoni (background) 62 million years ago. Amazing illustration by Andrey Atuchin!
Excited to share our new paper on the most complete mixodectid fossil ever discovered! Phylogenetic results support Mixodectes as most closely related to primatomorphans (primates and colugos) among mammals.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Happy Fossil Friday! I was happy to see the admittedly ugly but cool ceratopsian horn I picked up 13 centimeters below the pollen-defined K-Pg boundary many moons ago is now on permanent display at the Yale Peabody Museum!
I’m back to my old stomping grounds with Tyler Lyson and team at the Yale Peabody Museum today! I first met Tyler in Elisabeth Vrba’s Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory course in 2006, and we've been collaborating ever since…
Check out our children’s book on paleontology and life in the Eocene! This work stems from our NSF funded research on mammalian response to the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum in the Wind River and Bighorn basins of Wyoming.
digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/165/
Amazing illustration of early Paleocene biotic recovery in the Denver Basin by @olorotitan.bsky.social
Hi, I’m Stephen and I study how primates and other mammals evolved following the extinction of the dinosaurs. I run the Mammalian Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory (“MEML”) at Brooklyn College and look forward to sharing our discoveries with you!
