Ramapithecus is an extinctprimate erected from a two inch piece of a jawbone, with four teeth. The jawbone was found in the Siwalik Hills of northern India by G.E. Lewis in the 1930's and is similar to the jawbones of baboons. At the time it was said to be 14 million years old, and an human ancestor.
Around the same time Richard Leakey found a lower jawbone, which he named Bramapithecus. When this was compared with the jawbone of Ramapithecus and they were found to fit, Elwyn Simons had the idea that they could be from the same creature.
This combined set was compared with the orangutan and with the jawbone of man. The scientific community was pleased with this discovery until 1981, at which time the set was compared to the jawbone of a baboon. At this time it became hard to reconcile the facts with the previous theory that this creature was a part of man's lineage. Current thinking places Ramapithecus as a species of Sivapithecus, an ancestor of the orangutan.
"A reinterpretation of this jaw now suggests that Ramapithecus was an ancestor of neither modern humans or modern apes. Instead Pilbeam himself thinks it represents a third lineage that has no living descendants"
When this was compared with the jawbone of Ramapithecus and they were found to fit, Elwyn Simons had the idea that they could be from the same creature.
Ramapithecus [rAm u p u th E ´k u s, –pith´ u –] Pronunciation Key, an extinct group of primates that lived from about 12 to 14 million years ago, for a time regarded as a possible ancestor of Australopithecus and, therefore, of modern humans.
Although it was generally an apelike creature, Ramapithecus was considered a possible human ancestor on the basis of the reconstructed jaw and dental characteristics of fragmentary fossils.
A complete jaw discovered in 1976 was clearly nonhominid, however, and Ramapithecus is now regarded by many as a member of Sivapithecus, a genus considered to be an ancestor of the orangutan.
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