Protopithecus brasiliensis

Protopithecus brasiliensis is an extinct large New World monkey from the Late Pleistocene of Brazil and the type species of Protopithecus. The Danish paleontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund collected its type bones, a left proximal femur and a right distal humerus, in 1836 from the limestone cave of Lapo de Periperi in the Lagoa Santa region of Minas Gerais, and described the species in 1838 as the first of four fossil primates he named from there. Lund recognised it as a platyrrhine monkey despite its large size. In 1895 Herluf Winge moved it to the genus Eriodes, now part of Brachyteles, judging the fossils indistinguishable from spider monkey bones except for size. Larger skeletons from the Toca da Boa Vista caves in Bahia were later assigned to it, but a 2013 study moved most of that material to Cartelles, so only the holotype remains. Its habitat is unclear, since the region may have swung between dry open savannah and closed wet forest.