Macaca sp.

Pickford, Martin, Gommery, Dominique & Ingicco, Thomas, 2023, Macaque Molar From The Red Crag Formation, Waldringfield, England, Fossil Imprint 79 (1), pp. 26-36 : 31-32

Macaca sp.

Text-fig. 4

M a t e r i a l. CAMSM X.50380, right upper molar, M1/ or M2/.

Locality and geological context. Waldringfield, Suffolk, United Kingdom (52°03’10”N: 01°19’39”E). Reworked into the Red Crag Formation from a pre-existing deposit .

D e s c r i p t i o n. The isolated cercopithecoid tooth from Waldringfield has a glossy surface and the roots are polished and somewhat abraded indicating that it has been reworked into the Red Crag from a pre-existing deposit. The occlusal surface is deeply worn, indicating adult status, up to stage A4 of Ingicco’s ageing system ( Ingicco et al. 2012) but the crown is otherwise well preserved ( Text-fig. 4 ).

The tooth is quadricuspidate and bilophodont with shallow buccal and lingual notches and the floor of the median transverse valley is elevated well above cervical level. The two lingual roots are coalescent; the buccal ones separated from each other. The occlusal surface is heavily worn, to the extent that dentine lakes on the protocone and hypocone have coalesced across the median transverse valley. The dentine exposures on the paracone and metacone are smaller, the one on the paracone has joined the one developed on the protocone, the one on the hypocone is isolated at the apex of the cusp. The preprotocrista runs mesio-buccally, almost reaching the mesio-buccal corner of the crown. The posthypocrista is directed disto-buccally stopping short of the disto-buccal corner of the tooth.

The mesio-distal length of the tooth is 9.0 mm and its bucco-lingual breadth is 8.5 mm.

D i s c u s s i o n. Based on its dimensions, the Waldringfield tooth is more likely to be an M2/ than an M1/ although in the bivariate diagram ( Text-fig. 5 ) it plots close to the zone of overlap between M1/ and M2/. Given that its measurements may be slightly underestimated due to the abrasion and polishing that the tooth has undergone (red arrow in Text-fig. 5 ) the unabraded position would have been closer to the mean of M2/ of the two subspecies in the plot (M. s. florentina and M. s. sylvanus ) suggesting that the Waldringfield tooth is more likely to be an M2/ than an M1/.

Length

The presence of a distoconule disto-lingual to the hypocone on the M3/ is the main character mentioned by Cocchi (1872) for erecting the taxon M. s. florentina. This small additional cusp is present in most of the fossils attributed to the species and occurs in two-thirds of the specimens from Quibas, Spain ( Alba et al. 2011). However, because the Waldringfield specimen is not an M3/, it is not possible to confirm its subspecies attribution on the basis of this character. Furthermore, the tooth has morphometric similarities to Macaca libyca ( STROMER, 1920) . Given the scarcity of material, it is preferable to leave it in open nomencature, and to refer to it as Macaca sp.

Figures

Text-fig. 4. CAMSM X.50380, right M1/ or M2/ of Macaca sp. from Waldringfield, Suffolk, England. a: stereo occlusal view; b: buccal view; c: distal view; d: mesial view; e: lingual view.

Text-fig. 5. Length / breadth dimensions (in mm) of first and second upper molars of fossil and extant macaques. The red star with arrow represents the Waldringfield fossil. The white square represents M. s. sylvanus, and the black one M. s. florentina. Bars indicate the standard deviations around the mean. Blue and green triangles depict European fossils selected for their old age and their geographic position north of latitude 48°N. Miocene fossils are: 1. Wadi Natrun; Pliocene fossils are: 2. Gundersheim, 3. Grebeniki 2, 4. RDB Quarry Triversa, 5. Montpellier, 6. Cova Bonica; Pleistocene fossils from latitudes higher than 48°N are: 7. Heppenloch, 8. Hoek van Holland, 9. Untermassfeld and 10. Hoxne (data from Alba et al. 2011).