Puny primate quite a find for Carnegie paleontologist

David Templeton in the Post-Gazette:

It's smaller than a mouse, but this little character left behind the oldest primate fossils ever discovered in North America and Europe.

Its discovery in Mississippi represents a career triumph for Chris Beard, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Oakland.

The arboreal "Teilhardina magnoliana" apparently was living in Mississippi in what was then the Gulf Coast 55.8 million years ago when a major episode of global warming was under way.

More here.