Cercocebus
The white-eyelid mangabeys are African Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Cercocebus. They are characterized by their bare upper eyelids, which are lighter than their facial skin colouring, and the uniformly coloured hairs of the fur. The other two genera of mangabeys, Lophocebus and Rungwecebus, were once thought to be very closely related to Cercocebus, so much so that all the species were placed in one genus, but Lophocebus and Rungwecebus species are now understood to be more closely related to the baboons in genus Papio, while the Cercocebus species are more closely related to the mandrill.

Giulio Russo Photography · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- PapioninaPBDB
- Diet
- frugivore, folivorePBDB, for Cercopithecidae
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Cercopithecidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 2.8 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 11.7 ka.
11 occurrences of Cercocebus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
11 occurrences- Miocene11%
- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene73%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
4 formations
- Koobi Fora Formation · Omo Group7
- Lothagam 1 Formation · Lothagam Group1
- Sagantole Formation · Awash Group1
- Nawata and Nachukui Formation1
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The named rock units Cercocebus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Cercocebus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Cercocebus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
145 taxa- Crocodylus9 sites
- Polypterus8 sites
- Euthecodon brumpti7 sites
- Geochelone7 sites
- Clarias6 sites
- Crocodylus niloticus6 sites
- Theropithecus oswaldi6 sites
- Trionyx6 sites
- Hipparion5 sites
- Hominidae5 sites
- Lates5 sites
- Kolpochoerus limnetes4 sites
- Protopterus4 sites
- Bovidae3 sites
- Colobus3 sites
- Crocuta crocuta3 sites
- Gazella3 sites
- Hexaprotodon3 sites
- Tragelaphus3 sites
- Aepyceros2 sites
- Antilope2 sites
- Australopithecus africanus2 sites
- Barbus2 sites
- Ceratotherium simum2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Cercocebus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
9 references- Koobi Fora Research Project The Fossil Ungulates: Proboscidea, Perissodactyla, Suidae3
- The bone assemblages from the excavated sites1
- Lothagam: a record of faunal change in the late Miocene of East Africa1
- Stratigraphic Context of Fossil hominids from the Omo Group Deposits: Northern Turkana Basin, Kenya and Ethiopia1
- Provenience, Age and Associations of Archaic Homo Sapiens Crania fron Lake Eyasi, Tanzania1
- Paleoecology of Late Cenozoic Fishes from the Turkana Basin, Northern Kenya1
- Fossil Mammals and Artifacts from the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia1
- Extinct large Colobines from the Plio-Pleistocene of Africa1
- Geology and Fauna of a New Pliocene Locality in North- western Kenya1
Each of the 11 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Cercocebus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Giulio Russo Photography
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Cercocebus torquatus · ummz:mammals:39511
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itPapionina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Geoffroy 1812