ANP lecture 20 Flashcards
Primates have existed for most of the _________
Cenozoic
Geological era from the K/T boundary to present day
Cenozoic
The fossil record can tell us about the ________ year-history of primates (with some limitations)
66-million
Primates grouped with their closet living relatives in a clade
Euarchonta
-primates
-Colugos (Dermoptera)
-Tree Shrews (Scandentia)
Members of Euarchonta
Species which are more closely related to living
primates than the next closest living relative but are not a member of the clade
stem Primates
Species which share a common ancestor with all
living primates
Crown primates
a group of fossil species which are hypothesized to be stem primates
Plesiadapiformes
Fossils dated to 65.9 MYA, making it the oldest of
the stem primates
purgatorius
Primates evolved traits which allowed them to catch insects more effectively with their hands (Cartmill, 1974)
Visual Predation Hypothesis
Primates evolved traits which allowed them to better acquire fruits from thin terminal branches of trees (Sussman et al., 2013)
Angiosperm Co-Evolution Hypothesis
Both groups first appear during the Eocene, as part of a large faunal turnover after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)
Adapoids & Omomyoids
They are found throughout:
* North America
* Eurasia
* Africa
Adapoids & Omomyoids
- They are small, nocturnal animals with diets of insects and fruit.
- stem haplorhines.
- Most species go extinct by the start of the Oligocene epoch
Omomyoids
They are diurnal and have a range of diets, including folivory.
* larger in body size.
* One group survives well into the Miocene in Asia.
* stem strepsirhines.
Adapoids
-The presence of tooth combs and grooming claws
-help identify early strepsirrhines, like Karanisia.
* Fossil galagos are found from the Eocene of the Fayum, Egypt and the Miocene of East Africa.
* The lemur record is poor.
Fossil strepsirrhines
Almost all of the known lemur material comes from _______
* bones which are very young (<50 kya) and have not fully fossilized.
* extremely diverse in both locomotion and diet.
* Example: Palaeopropithecus, the sloth-like lemur
subfossil lemurs
A major unifying feature is the loss of the Tapetum Lucidum
haplorhines
-include all Haplorhines except tarsiers and their fossil relatives.
* begin to appear during the middle-Eocene and are best known from the Fayum of Egypt.
* Additional fossils are from North Africa and Asia
Anthropoids
-The earliest fossils show a lot of similarity to the anthropoid fossils from Egypt.
* Monkeys reach South America by the early Oligocene via rafts of plant matter
Platyrhines (New world monkeys)
-include Old World Monkeys and Apes.
* Many of the earliest ________, such as Proconsul, are found from Oligocene and Early Miocene deposits of East Africa.
catarhines
-This area is part of the East African Rift Valley and is great for fossils!
* Fossil-bearing sediments as old as the Cretaceous are found here, but also Oligocene and younger.
Turkana, Kenya
Three primate taxa are found here:
* Afropithecus
* Turkanapithecus
* Simiolus
Paleontology in Western Turkana
evolve outside of Africa and move into Africa in waves during the Oligocene and early Miocene
carnivorans
niches were instead occupied by Hyaenodonts. These are mammals with extreme dental adaptation for processing meat.
Carnivore
There are three major types of predators
-Ambush predation
* Pounce predation
* Pursuit predation
Studying the relationship between structures of the body (ex. Bones, muscles) and how they function
Functional anatomy
Evidence of suspensory behavior in the late Middle Miocene.
Found in multiple regions:
* East Africa
* Mediterranean of Europe
* Siwaliks of India
Fossil hominoids
The largest known fossil primate is a fossil
orangutan, Gigantopithecus, which went extinct __________
~300 KYA.
known from Chad, and is currently the oldest putative hominin. It is 7 million year old
Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Limited fossil evidence
- Teeth
- A partial femur
from Kenya and dates to 6 MYA
Orrorin Tugenensis
