With advanced 3-D imaging technology at their disposal, a team of researchers made new observations of a 15-million-year-old skull belonging to an Old World monkey known as Victoriapithecus.
According to NBC News, authors of a study published in the journal Nature Communications detailed surprising complexity of the animal's brain despite its small size. For their work, the researchers created a 3-D model of the monkey's brain using high-resolution X-ray imaging.
When compared to modern monkeys', Victoriapithecus was about half the size, but its olfactory bulb was much larger than expected. This may have given the ancient monkey a greater sense of smell compared to its modern ancestors.
"It probably had a better sense of smell than many monkeys and apes living today," study co-author Lauren Gonzales, of Duke University, said in a press release. "In living higher primates you find the opposite: the brain is very big, and the olfactory bulb is very small, presumably because as their vision got better their sense of smell got worse.
"But instead of a tradeoff between smell and sight, Victoriapithecus might have retained both capabilities."
The Victoriapithecus is a family of Old World monkeys, which range from medium to large in size, including primates like baboons and macaques. The skull the researchers examined was found on the Kenyan island in Lake Victoria in 1997.
"This is the oldest skull researchers have found for Old World monkeys, so it's one of the only clues we have to their early brain evolution," study co-author Brenda Benefit, of New Mexico State University, said in the release. "Brain size and brain complexity can evolve independently; they don't have to evolve together at the same time."
