2025-2029
Project
EVEPRIMASIA
Evolutionary ecology of fossil
anthropoid primates in Southeast Asia
Supervisors
- Olivier Chavasseau
- Hervé Bocherens (Université de Tübingen, Allemagne)
Funding
EVEPRIMASIA is a collaborative research project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) under its Collaborative Research Projects – International program, and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), for the period 2019–2024.
Aims
The EVEPRIMASIA project aims to improve our understanding of the evolutionary history of anthropoid primates by investigating their paleoecology and paleoenvironmental context. The project focuses on primates from the Central Myanmar Basin, where the earliest anthropoids evolved (ca. 40 Ma, Pondaung Formation), and on the fossil pongine Khoratpithecus (ca. 9 Ma, Irrawaddy Formation).
Some results
The EVEPRIMASIA project has refined our understanding of the paleoenvironment inhabited by the fossil pongine Khoratpithecus. This ape lived in a closed habitat devoid of C4 photosynthetic plants. This environment is comparable to those reconstructed for the fossil pongine Sivapithecus (Late Miocene, Pakistan) and for Pleistocene orangutans (Pongo) in Southeast Asia. The similarity of these environments suggests that pongines may have continuously occupied the same ecological niche since the Early Miocene.
Consortium
The EVEPRIMASIA consortium is co-led by Olivier Chavasseau (PALEVOPRIM) and Hervé Bocherens (Geobiology Group, University of Tübingen). It brings together around ten researchers and a PhD candidate in a joint doctoral programme (Sophie Habinger), and includes field expeditions and museum collection studies in Myanmar.
