Dr Robyn Pickering, one of the newest members of the Geology Department at UCT, was recently involved in the dating of an extinct monkey found in an underwater cave in the Dominican Republic. Lead researchers, Dr Pickering and Dr Helen Green of the the University of Melbourne, dated the limestone beds surrounding the fossil using the Uranium-series technique and calculated an age of 1.3Ma. This calculated age is important to understanding primate evolution in this region as Dr Pickering believes it shows that Antillothrix existed on the island of Hispaniola for over a million years relatively unchanged morphologically.

To find out more about Dr Pickering's involvement on this exciting project, please see the link here to the Science Faculty website.