8: Primate Evolution

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Learning Objectives

Understand the major trends in primate evolution from the origin of primates to the origin of our own species.
Learn about primate adaptations and how they characterize major primate groups.
Discuss the kinds of evidence that anthropologists use to find out how extinct primates are related to each other and to living primates.
Recognize how the changing geography and climate of Earth have influenced where and when primates have thrived or gone extinct.

Image: Fossil of Plesiadapis by Ghedoghedo under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

8.1: What Is A Primate?
The first fifty million years of primate evolution was a series of adaptive radiations leading to the diversification of the earliest lemurs, monkeys, and apes. The primate story begins in the canopy and understory of conifer-dominated forests, with our small, furtive ancestors subsisting at night, beneath the notice of day-active dinosaurs
8.2: The Origin of Primates
The Paleocene was the first epoch in the Age of Mammals. Soon after the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event, new groups of placental mammals appear in the fossil record. The Paleocene saw the emergence of several families of mammals that have been implicated in the origin of primates. These are the plesiadapiforms. Plesiadapiforms are archaic primates, meaning that they possessed some primate features and lacked others.
8.3: The Emergence of Modern Primate Groups
There is considerable debate among paleoanthropologists as to the geographic origins of anthropoids. In addition, there is debate regarding the source group for anthropoids. Three different hypotheses have been articulated in the literature. These are the adapoid origin hypothesis, the omomyoid origin hypothesis, and the tarsier origin hypothesis.
8.4: Planet of Apes
The Miocene Epoch was a time of mammalian diversification and extinction, global climate change, and ecological turnover. In the Miocene, there was an initial warming trend across the globe with the expansion of subtropical forests, followed by widespread cooling and drying with the retreat of tropical forests and replacement with more open woodlands and eventually grasslands.
8.5: End of Chapter Review
Discussion questions and key term definitions.
8.6: Meet the Authors