Capuchin cousins (Image: Michael And Patricia Fogden/Minden FLPA)

PITY the mammals living on lush Caribbean islands. Over the last 12,000 years, they have suffered the highest extinction rates of any on Earth. Now, a primate skull found in an underwater cave on Hispaniola underscores what we have lost – a fauna so primitive and strange that the archipelago has been likened to Madagascar.

Today, there are no primates in the Caribbean, and it wasn’t until 1952 that palaeontologists accepted that the islands had once been home to monkeys.

The new find – the first well-preserved skull from Hispaniola (see picture) …