5

Primates:
Past and Present
PART- 2
 Primates: Past and Present
65 MYA to the end of the Miocene, a little over 5 MYA.

All primates belong to the class Mammalia

Mammals are warm-blooded

Many skeletal features of the primates reflect an arboreal

 Common Primate Traits
FEATURE- Clavicle, or collarbone.

USE- Without a clavicle, we could not throw a spear or a

ball; we could not make any fine tools or turn doorknobs if
we did not have rotatable forearms.

Generally, Penta-ductile with broad & flat nails not claw-like

& Mostly opposable thumbs.

Mostly diurnal
The Various Living Primates

• the prosimians—literally, pre-monkeys—and

the anthropoids.
• A newer classification divides the primates
2 suborders: into those with wet noses, the strepsirrhines,
and those with dry noses, the haplorrhines.
Prosimians

• The prosimians resemble other mammals more than the anthropoid primates do
• E.g.- Snouts, Olfaction.

Various Forms

• Lemur like Forms- found only on 2 island areas off the southeastern coast of
Africa: Madagascar and the Comoro Islands.

• Size- Mouse lemur to the 4-foot-long indri, usually produce single offspring,
although twins and even triplets are common.

• Locomotion Pattern- vertical clinging & leaping.

• Habit- Nocturnal
• Unusual feature- females often dominate, particularly over access to food.
Loris like Forms –

• found in both Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

• All nocturnal and arboreal + Frugivorous & insectivorous
• 2 major subfamilies, lorises and the bush babies (galagos),
• Bush babies are quick, active animals that hop between branches and tree trunks in
the vertical-clinging- and-leaping pattern.
• Lorises are much slower, walking sedately along branches hand over hand in the
quadrupedal fashion.

Tarsiers

• Found now only on the islands of the Philippines and Indonesia.

• Nocturnal + Arboreal + Insectivorous
• Name from their elongated tarsal bones & are skilled at vertical clinging & leaping.
• Chromosomes, Dental claws more than two nipples, like that of other prosimians.
Anthropoids
The Hominoids

Gibbons and Siamangs

• Found in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
• Gibbons- small, 11 & 15 LBS. Siamangs- slightly larger, not more than 25 LBS.
•
• Both are mostly fruit eaters. They are spectacular brachiators with long arm.

• They live in small family groups consisting of a monogamous adult pair, one or
two immature offspring. When the young reach adulthood, they are driven
from home by the adults.
• There is little sexual dimorphism & Highly territorial; an adult pair advertises
their territory by singing and defends it by chasing others away
Orangutans
• Survive only on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
• Sexual Dimorphism- Males weigh almost twice as much as females & they also
have large cheek pads, throat pouches
• Primarily fruit eaters and arboreal. Heaviest arboreal primates.
Gorillas
• found in the lowland areas of western equatorial Africa and in the mountain
areas of Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda.
• Unlike the other apes, they mostly eat other parts of plants
• Gorillas are by far the largest of the surviving apes. (adult males 450 pounds)
• Knuckle walking Pattern of Locomotion.
• Gorillas tend to live in groups consisting of a dominant male, called a silverback
Chimpanzees

• Live in the forested areas of Africa, from Guinea Bissau in the west to Tanzania.
• 2 distinct species of chimpanzee—the common chimpanzee and the bonobo, or
pygmy, chimpanzee.
• Bonobos are more slender, with longer limbs & digits, smaller heads, darker faces.
• Unlike common chimpanzees, bonobos show almost no sexual dimorphism
• Bonobos are more gregarious than common chimpanzees
• They are primarily fruit eaters.
• Both are arboreal and terrestrial, move by knuckle walking.
• Occasionally, they stand and walk upright, usually when they are traveling through tall
grass or are trying to see long distances.
• Less sexually dimorphic than the other great apes.
• Studies at Gombe National Park in Tanzania etc. Show they are not only eat insects,
but also small lizards, and birds, but they also actively hunt and kill larger animals.
 Distinctive Hominin Traits
Physical Traits
• Lumbar curve in the spine non-prehensile feet ~ bipedalism
• both a power grip, and precision grip,
• Brain & cerebral cortex (center of speech & other higher mental activities) is large and complex.
• long canines and diastema absent (allows horizontal jaw movement)
• parabolic arch, Chin, Year- round reproductive potential

Behavioral Abilities
• Complex Toolmaking
• Language - eagle” call- looked up; “leopard” call- ran high into the trees.

Other TRAITS
• Completely terrestrial
• longest dependency period
• division of labor by gender in food-getting and food-sharing in adulthood
• More Gender ROLES
RESEARCHES

Beatrice T. Gardner and R. Allen Gardner raised a female chimpanzee

named Washoe and trained her to communicate with startling
effectiveness by means of American Sign Language hand gestures. After a
year of training, she was able to associate gestures with specific activities.
The Emergence of Primates

When did the primates first emerge?

• Some paleoanthropologists have suggested fossils from the Paleocene epoch, which began
about 65 mya, are from archaic primates.

Contender-1 - Plesiadapiforms.

• Found in both Europe and North America,

• Squirrel like, a large snout, large incisors, large eye orbits located on the sides of the skull,
Claws.
• Hands and feet did not appear to allow for grasping.

Contender-2 Eocene fossils – adapids, omomyids, Carpolestes simpsoni

• Carpholites has mix of primate and non-primate characteristics.

• It lacks stereoscopic vision but, has nails instead of claws and grasping limbs
The Environment
The climate of the Cretaceous period was almost uniformly damp and
mild, but temperatures began falling at the end of the Cretaceous.

Around the beginning of the Paleocene epoch, both seasonal and

geographic fluctuations in temperature began to develop. The climate
became much drier in many areas.

Forests and savannas thrived, One important reason for the very
different climates of the past is continental drift.

As the continents changed position, they moved into locations with

different climatic conditions.
What in Particular May Have Favored
the Emergence of Primates?

The Arboreal Theory

• That the primates evolved from insectivores that took to the trees. Different
paleoanthropologists emphasized different possible adaptations to life in the
trees.

Major Scholars

• In 1912, G. Elliot Smith suggested that taking to the trees favored vision over
smell.

• In 1916, Frederic Wood Jones emphasized changes in the hand and foot. He
thought that tree climbing would favor grasping hands and feet, with the hind
limbs becoming more specialized
Other Work

• In 1921, Treacher Collins suggested that the eyes of the early primates
came to face forward not just because the snout got smaller. Rather, he
thought that 3-D binocular vision would be favored an animal jumping from
branch to branch would be more likely to survive if it could accurately judge
distances across open space

Weaknesses in the Theory

• Matt Cartmill- there are living mammals that dwell in trees but seem to do
very well without primatelike characteristics.
• Best example- is the tree squirrel. Its eyes are not front-facing, its sense of
smell is not reduced in comparison with other rodents, it has claws rather
than nails, and it lacks an opposable thumb. Yet these squirrels are very
successful in trees.
Other Examples

• Other animals have some primate traits but do not live in trees or do
not move around in trees as primates do. For example, carnivores,
such as cats, hawks, and owls, have forward-facing eyes, and the
chameleon, a reptile, and some Australian marsupial mammals that
prey on insects in bushes and shrubs have grasping hands and feet.

Cartmill Conclusion

• Early primates may have been basically insect eaters and that
3-D vision, grasping hands and feet, and reduced claws may
have been selectively advantageous for hunting insects
Early Eocene Primates: Omomyids and Adapids

Omomyids

• Considered tarsier like because of their large eyes(Nocturnal?), long

tarsal bones, and very small size.

• Insect eaters and the larger ones may have relied more on fruit.

Adapids

• Lemur-like, active during the day and relied more on leaf and fruit
vegetation.

• One adapid known from its abundant fossil finds is Notharctus. It had
a small, broad face with full stereoscopic vision and a reduced muzzle.
Oligocene
Anthropoids Fayum Deposits yielded a
remarkable array of early anthropoid
fossils.

During the Oligocene epoch, 34-24

Mya, the Fayum was a tropical rain
forest

Oligocene anthropoids from the

Fayum are grouped into two main
types: the monkeylike parapithecids
and the apelike propliopithecids
Parapithecids

• 3 premolars (in each quarter), as do most prosimians and the New World
monkeys.
• They were similar to modern anthropoids, with a bony partition behind the
eye sockets, broad incisors, projecting canines, and low, rounded cusps on
their molars.
• But they had prosimian like premolars and relatively small brains. The
parapithecids were small, generally weighing less than 3 pounds, and
resembled the squirrel monkeys
• The parapithecids are the earliest definite anthropoid group, and although
there is still disagreement among paleoanthropologists, most believe that
the emergence of the anthropoids preceded the split between the New
World monkeys (platyrrhines) and the Old World monkeys (catarrhines).
 • Dental formula of modern catarrhines.
•
Propliopithecids • Aegyptopithecus, the best-known
propliopithecid, probably moved around
quadrupedally in the trees and weighed about
13 pounds.

• It had relatively large incisors, suggesting that

Aegyptopithecus ate mostly fruit.

• Its eyes were relatively small(Diurnal),It had a

long muzzle and a relatively small brain.
 The Emergence of Hominoids

Backdrop

• During the Miocene epoch, 24 - 5.2 MYA, monkeys & apes clearly diverged in
appearance, and numerous kinds of apes appeared in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
• In the early Miocene, temperatures were considerably warmer than Oligocene.

Early Miocene Proto-Apes

• Best-known genus = Proconsul, from Kenya & Uganda, ranging ~ 20 Mya.

• Much bigger than any of Oligocene anthropoids, ranging from about the size of
a gibbon to that of a female gorilla.
• They lacked a tail. (most definitive features of hominoids)
• Proconsul was primarily an arboreal quadruped( Not brachiator), fruit eaters.
 Many of
Another Proconsul’s
Middle The oldest, (~13 hominoid, features but
mya), is Kenyapithecus, have teeth and
Miocene Pierolapithecus, was found on faces that
Apes (16-10 recently found Maboko Island resemble those
near Barcelona, and nearby of more modern
MYA) Spain. locations in hominoids. And
Kenya. also more
terrestrial.
Late Miocene Apes
• IN the late Miocene, apes diversified & moved into many areas.
• Fossils are abundant in Europe and Asia, less so in Africa.

• One well-known late Miocene ape from Europe is Oreopithecus,

which dates from about 8 million years ago.

• It had extremely long arms and hands and mobile joints, and was
likely an agile brachiator. Its dentition suggests diet of leaves.

• Most scholars today consider it an early, albeit specialized ape

 • At one time, Sivapithecus, which dates from ~ 13- 8
MYA, was thought to be ancestral to hominins.
•
• Smaller canines, and less sexual dimorphism than
other Miocene apes, and had a Parabolic dental arcade
in some reconstructions (all hominin features)
Sivapithecids
• It also lived in a mixed woodland–grassland
environment.
• However, as more fossil material was uncovered,
scholars recognized that Sivapithecus was remarkably
similar to the modern orangutan in the face, and it is
now thought to be ancestral to the orangutan
 Dryopithecus, appears ~ 15 MYA, was a chimpanzee-
sized ape that lived in the forests of Eurasia.

Mainly arboreal and apparently omnivorous, had

thinner tooth enamel than Sivapithecus, lighter jaws.

In the palate, jaw, and midface, Dryopithecus looked

Dryopithecids like the African apes and humans.
In contrast to later hominoids, however, it had a very
short face and a relatively small brow ridge.

The fingers and elbows & Recent studies suggests-

Dryopithecus was highly efficient at suspensory
locomotion and probably moved through the trees like
modern orangutans do.
The Until recently, there has been an almost complete lack of African fossil
hominoids dating between 13.5 million and 5 million years ago.
Divergence
of
Hominins Recently, 2 species, Orrorin tugenensis, from Kenya and dated to about 6
from the million years ago, and Sahelanthropus tchadensis, from Chad and dated to
perhaps 7 million years ago, have provided a glimpse of hominoid
Other evolution during this time period.
Hominoids Still, this scarcity of fossils from 13.5 to 5 million years ago is unfortunate
for our understanding of human evolution because the earliest
unambiguous bipedal primates (hominins) appear in Africa near the
beginning of the Pliocene, after 5 million years ago.

To understand the evolutionary links between the apes of the Miocene and
the hominins of Africa, we need more fossil evidence from late Miocene
times in Africa.