Saadanius

Name meaning:

Monkey

Period of life:

28–29 million years ago

Period:

Paleogene period

Habitat:

Rainforests

Taxonomy:

Mammals

Countries:

Paleogene period Saadanius | 3D Dinopedia

Puijila

Megalodon

Saadanius (28–29 million years ago)

What does the name mean: “Saadanius” comes from the Arabic word sa’adan, meaning monkey.

Saadanius (Saadanius hijazensis) was an anthropoid primate, one of the most intriguing primates in history.

What makes Saadanius so remarkable is not that it was especially huge, toothy, or strange. On the contrary, it is important precisely because it was almost an “average monkey.” It is one of the oldest representatives of the catarrhines, the large group that today includes Old World monkeys, gibbons, apes, and humans ourselves.

But Saadanius was not yet a guenon, a baboon, a gibbon, or an early ape in the strict sense. It stood near the point on the evolutionary tree where two great lines would later diverge: the cercopithecoids — future macaques, guenons, baboons, and colobuses — and the hominoids — gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans.

That is why it is tempting to call it a “missing link.” But it is more accurate to say this: Saadanius was not necessarily our direct ancestor, but rather a close relative of the common ancestor of Old World monkeys and apes. It shows what a primate may have looked like at the moment when evolution had not yet “decided” where the future lineages would go. Its skull already has the traits of an advanced catarrhine primate, but it does not yet have the full set of specialized features of either modern Old World monkeys or apes.

This makes Saadanius especially valuable. It is like a photograph taken just before a major evolutionary split. Before it, we had more ancient catarrhines; after it, more recognizable monkeys and apes. Saadanius falls between them: not a final form, not an “ape-human,” not a fantastic hybrid, but a real animal that helps us see what the general background may have been like before the emergence of two branches, one of which would ultimately lead to humans.

It lived about 29–28 million years ago in what would become western Saudi Arabia — but this was nothing like today’s desert. At that time, Arabia was still part of the green African continent: wet forests, floodplains, swampy lowlands, and a warm world at the edge of ancient seas.

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