Chapter 12 - Fossil Prosimians

Abstract

This chapter discusses the earliest true primates, the fossil prosimians that were the most abundant and diverse primates in the Eocene Epoch, as well as the paleontological record of lorises, galagos, and tarsiers. Adapoids were a diverse radiation related to living strepsirrhines that lived North America, Africa and Eurasia in the Eocene and persisted in Asia until the late Miocene. In many aspects of their anatomy, and probably their behavior, they resembled extant Malagasy lemurs and extant lorises. They included species that were faunivorous, frugivorous, and folivorous and a wide range of leapers, arboreal, quadrupeds and slow climbers. The direct ancestors of living strepsirrhines first appear in the Eocene of North Africa and include some species clearly related to extant lorisoids as well as several specialized forms unlike any later sprepsirrhines. There are numerous fossil lorises and galagos from the Miocene and Pliocene.