Name:
Ganlea (after a village in Myanmar); pronounced gan-LAY-ah
Habitat:
Woodlands of Asia
Historical Epoch:
Late Eocene (38 million years ago)
Size and Weight:
About 2 feet long and 5 pounds
Diet:
Fruits, seeds and nuts
Distinguishing Characteristics:
Small size; short face; long tail
About Ganlea:
Like many putative "missing links," Ganlea has been somewhat oversold by the popular media: this tiny tree dweller has been touted as evidence that anthropoids (the family of primates that embraces monkeys, apes and humans) originated in Asia rather than Africa. There's even a case to be made that Ganlea was hyped by its discoverers as a way of stealing the thunder from another prehistoric primate, the much earlier Darwinius from western Europe, which has been proposed as the earliest direct ancestor of humans (few paleontologists are convinced). In fact, if the team behind Ganlea is to be believed, Darwinius was actually more closely related to lemurs than to modern humans, leaving Ganlea as the true torch-bearer of the Eocene epoch. To date, the evidence is insufficient to make such a grandiose claim, and most experts don't place Ganlea at the root of the anthropoid family tree.
