biology

Nuciruptor

Nuciruptor is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nuciruptor rather than just read about it. In short: Nuciruptor is an extinct genus of New World monkeys from the Middle Miocene (Laventan in the South American land mammal ages; 13.8 to 11.8 million years ago). Its remains have been found at the Konzentrat-Lagerstätte of La Venta in the Honda Group of Colombia.

Key takeaways

Nuciruptor belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Nuciruptor to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nuciruptor from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nuciruptor is an extinct genus of New World monkeys from the Middle Miocene (Laventan in the South American land mammal ages; 13.8 to 11.8 million years ago). Its remains have been found at the Konzentrat-Lagerstätte of La Venta in the Honda Group of Colombia. The type species is N. rubricae.

Etymology The generic name Nuciruptor rubricae is derived from the Latin nuci ("nut") and ruptor meaning "to break". The specific rubricae refers to the red beds where the fossils have been found.

Description A lower mandible fossil of Nuciruptor was discovered in the El Cardón redbeds of the Cerro Colorado Member of the Villavieja Formation, Honda Group, just below the San Francisco Sandstone, which has been dated to the Laventan, about 12.8 ± 0.2 million years old. From the same locality, fossils of Saimiri annectens were recovered. Nuciruptor resembles living pitheciins in having elongated, procumbent, and styliform lower incisors with very weak lingual heels. Moreover, as in living pitheciins, the incisors are set in a procumbently oriented mandibular symphysis, and its mandibular corpus deepens appreciably under the molars. At the same time, Nuciruptor does not possess several of the distinctive synapomorphies of extant pitheciins. Nuciruptor remains more primitive than living pitheciins in that no diastemata separate its lower incisors from the canines. Its lower canines retain the primitive structure in not having a sharply defined protocristid. P2 is not a robust or high-crowned tooth and does not have a metaconid. Neither are the other premolars molarised by the addition of large talonids. The estimated weight of Nuciruptor was 2,000 grams (4.4 lb). The genus shows similarity with another fossil primate from La Venta, Cebupithecia. As Cebupithecia, Nuciruptor is thought to be an ancestral saki (Pitheciidae).

Habitat

The Honda Group, and more precisely the "Monkey Beds", are the richest site for fossil primates in South America. The monkeys of the Honda Group arguably were living in habitat that was in contact with the Amazon and Orinoco Basins, and that La Venta itself was probably seasonally dry forest.

See also

List of primates of Colombia Lagonimico Mohanamico

References

Bibliography Defler, Thomas (2004), Historia natural de los primates colombianos (PDF), Universidad Nacional de Colombia, pp. 1–613, retrieved 2017-09-24 Kay, Richard F.; Meldrum, D. Jeffrey (1997), The Miocene Fauna of La Venta, Colombia - A new small platyrrhine from the Miocene of Colombia and the phyletic position of the callitrichines, Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 435–458, retrieved 2017-09-24 Lynch Alfaro, Jessica W.; Cortés Ortiz, Liliana; Di Fiore, Anthony; Boubli, Jean P. (2015), "Special issue: Comparative biogeography of Neotropical primates" (PDF), Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 82: 518–529, Bibcode:2015MolPE..82..518L, doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2014.09.027, PMID 25451803, retrieved 2017-09-24 Meldrum, D. Jeffrey; Kay, Richard F. (1997), "Nuciruptor rubricae, a New Pitheciin Seed Predator From the Miocene of Colombia", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 102 (3): 407–427, doi:10.1002/(SICI)1096-8644(199703)102:3<407::AID-AJPA8>3.0.CO;2-R, PMID 9098507, retrieved 2017-09-24 Rosenberger, Alfred L.; Hartwig, Walter Carl (2001), "New World Monkeys" (PDF), Encyclopedia of Life Sciences: 1–4, retrieved 2017-09-24 Silvestro, Daniele; Tejedor, Marcelo F.; Serrano-Serrano, Martha L.; Loiseau, Oriane; Rossier, Victor; Rolland, Jonathan; Zizka, Alexander; Höhna, Sebastian; Antonelli, Alexandre; Salamin, Nicolas (2019), "Early Arrival and Climatically-Linked Geographic Expansion of New World Monkeys from Tiny African Ancestors", Systematic Biology, 68: 78–92, bioRxiv 10.1101/178111, doi:10.1093/sysbio/syy046, PMC 6292484 Takai, Masanaru; Anaya, Federico; Suzuki, Hisashi; Shigehara, Nobuo; Setoguchi, Takeshi (2001), "A New Platyrrhine from the Middle Miocene of La Venta, Colombia, and the Phyletic Position of Callicebinae", Anthropological Science, Tokyo, 109 (4): 289–307, doi:10.1537/ase.109.289, retrieved 2017-09-24 Tejedor, Marcelo F (2013), "Sistemática, evolución y paleobiogeografía de los primates Platyrrhini" (PDF), Revista del Museo de La Plata, 20: 20–39, retrieved 2017-09-24

Further reading Fleagle, John G.; Rosenberger, Alfred L. (2013), The Platyrrhine Fossil Record, Elsevier, pp. 1–256, ISBN 9781483267074, retrieved 2017-10-21 Hartwig, W.C.; Meldrum, D.J. (2002), The Primate Fossil Record - Miocene platyrrhines of the northern Neotropics, Cambridge University Press, pp. 175–188, ISBN 978-0-521-08141-2, retrieved 2017-09-24

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nuciruptor

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nuciruptor claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Nuciruptor before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Nuciruptor ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Nuciruptor

In research: Nuciruptor appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Nuciruptor in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Nuciruptor is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Fossil taxa described in 1997, Fossils of Colombia, Honda Group, Colombia, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nuciruptor outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Nuciruptor in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nuciruptor means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Nuciruptor out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nuciruptor in simple terms?

Why does Nuciruptor matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Nuciruptor?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Nuciruptor.