ABSTRACT
Oreopithecus bambolii is a fossil catarrhine primate from the Pontian 1 of Tuscany, Italy, dated as 10–12 million years old. Its classification has been controversial ever since Gervais described the type specimen, a mandible with teeth, in 1872. Many authors, following Schlosser (1887), have regarded it as a cercopithecoid monkey (cf. Hürzeler, 1958, 1960). Others, however, have assigned it to the anthropoid apes, some, like, Schwalbe (1916), placing it in a separate anthropoid-ape family, the Oreopithecidae. Still others seem to have been inclined to view it as a sort of forme de passage or link between the monkeys and apes. Majority opinion, however, seems to have labeled it a cercopithecoid of some sort. All of the earlier studies dealt only with jaws and teeth—the only parts of the body then available—and most of these, unfortunately, as Hürzeler (1949; also see Patterson, 1955) has noted, were made from casts, and bad casts, at that.
