With a weight of approximately 5 pounds (2.3 kg),[4] around 1 foot (0.3 m) tall and resembling a lemur,[5]Ekgmowechashala is the only known North American primate of its time; it lived during the late Oligocene and early Miocene.[5][6][7]
The shape of its teeth,[13] and their likeness to those of raccoons, indicate that it ate soft fruit provided by the warm forests of the Rocky Mountains during the early Miocene.[14]
Ekgmowechashala philotau, known from material in Nebraska and South Dakota, was thought to be the only species of this genus, but material from Oregon has been recently described as a new species, E. zancanellai. A tooth from the Toledo Bend Ranch Local Fauna of far eastern Texas has been assigned to this genus.[19]
^ abcdMacDonald, James Reid (1963). "The Miocene faunas from the Wounded Knee area of western South Dakota". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 125: 139–238. hdl:2246/1259.
^Samuels, Joshua X.; Albright, L. Barry; Fremd, Theodore J. (2015). "The last fossil primate in North America, new material of the enigmatic Ekgmowechashala from the Arikareean of Oregon". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 158 (1): 43–54. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22769. PMID26118778.
^McKenna, Malcolm C.; Bell, Susan K. (1997). Classification of Mammals: Above the Species Level. Columbia University Press. p. 327. ISBN978-0-231-11013-6.
^ abMarivaux, Laurent; Chaimanee, Yaowalak; Tafforeau, Paul; Jaeger, Jean-Jacques (2006). "New strepsirrhine primate from the Late Eocene of peninsular Thailand (Krabi Basin)". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 130 (4): 425–434. doi:10.1002/ajpa.20376. PMID16444732.
^Albright III, L. Barry (2005). "Ekgmowechashala (Mammalia, ?Primates) from the Gulf coastal plain". Bulletin of the Florida Museum of Natural History. 45 (4): 355–361. doi:10.58782/flmnh.alnj3664.