Monkeys Rafted Across Atlantic Twice

More than 30 million years ago, the ancestors of modern South American monkeys reached the Americas by accidentally crossing the Atlantic Ocean on floating mats of vegetation and earth. Scientists believe storms swept monkeys from the African coast onto natural rafts before currents carried the survivors across an ocean that was then only 930 to 1,300 miles wide. Four 32-million-year-old fossil teeth found in Peru suggest that an extinct African primate group called parapithecids made the same journey separately, meaning monkeys may have rafted across the Atlantic at least twice.

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