Ancient DNA of the extinct Jamaican monkey Xenothrix reveals extreme insular change within a morphologically conservative radiation

Until recently, the Caribbean contained a remarkable evolutionary radiation of mammals, including several highly unusual primates; the oddest was the Jamaican monkey Xenothrix. Unfortunately, all of these primates are now extinct, and efforts to reconstruct their evolutionary history have had to use limited morphological information from incomplete subfossils. Despite generally poor preservation of DNA in ancient tropical samples, we extracted the first ancient DNA from an extinct Caribbean primate, which reveals that, instead of being distantly related to living Neotropical monkeys, Xenothrix is actually an extremely derived titi monkey that underwent major body-plan modification after colonizing an island environment. The date of the split between Xenothrix and other titi monkeys also reveals that primates colonized the Caribbean more than once.