Indraloris
| Indraloris | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Suborder: | Strepsirrhini |
| Family: | †Sivaladapidae |
| Subfamily: | †Sivaladapinae |
| Genus: |
†Indraloris Lewis, 1933 |
| Species | |
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Indraloris is a fossil primate from the Miocene of India and Pakistan in the family Sivaladapidae. Two species are now recognized: I. himalayensis from Haritalyangar, India (about 9 million years old) and I. kamlialensis from the Pothohar Plateau, Pakistan (15.2 million years old). Other material from the Potwar Plateau (16.8 and 15.2 million years old) may represent an additional, unnamed species. Body mass estimates range from about 2 kg (4.4 lb) for the smaller I. kamlialensis to over 4 kg (8.8 lb) for the larger I. himalayensis.
Indraloris is known from isolated teeth and fragmentary lower jaws. The jaw is deep under the last premolars, but becomes shallower towards the front. The lower premolars are elongate. The lower molars are shorter and broader than those of Sivaladapis. Indraloris may have been arboreal and at least partly frugivorous. When the first Indraloris fossils were discovered in the early 1930s, one was misidentified as a carnivoran and the other as a loris. The carnivoran identification was corrected in 1968, and in 1979 Indraloris and the related Sivaladapis were identified as late survivors of Adapiformes, an archaic primate group.
Currently, Indraloris is considered to be a valid genus within the family Sivaladapidae, containing two named species: I. himalayensis from India and I. kamlialensis from Pakistan. A third species may be represented in the Pakistani material of Indraloris. However, Indraloris has had a complicated taxonomic history, and some of the known material was misidentified as members of other mammalian groups for decades.
In 1932, British paleontologist Guy Pilgrim described two species from the Miocene of what is now India and Pakistan, Sivanasua palaeindica from Chinji (Pakistan) and Sivanasua himalayensis from Haritalyangar (India). He attributed both to Sivanasua, a carnivoran genus otherwise known from Europe. The next year, American scientist G. Edward Lewis described the new genus and species Indraloris lulli from Haritalyangar, which he provisionally allocated to the family Lorisidae. The generic name, Indraloris, combines the name of the god Indra with the generic name Loris, and the specific name, lulli, honors Richard Swann Lull, at the time director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. It was not until 1968 that American anthropologist Ian Tattersall noted that Pilgrim's Sivanasua species had been misidentified; he suggested that Sivanasua himalayensis was probably the same as Indraloris lulli, but left the affinities of Sivanasua palaeindica open. Tattersall, who also described additional material of Indraloris, continued to regard the animal as a lorisid.
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