Primate Origins and Supraordinal Relationships: Morphological Evidence

Rethinking Primate Origins Again

“…Historically, paleontologists have also had to deal with a complex, natural radiation of Paleocene, and early Eocene mammals with some features that are unique and primate‐like in the modern sense, and other features that are not. These early relatives of modern primates are classified as Plesiadapiformes [Bloch et al, ; Gunnell, ; Rose, ; Silcox et al, ; for reviews see Conroy, ; Fleagle, ]. The Plesiadapiformes stand in contrast to the later primates of the Eocene which are called “primates of modern aspect” or Euprimates (true primates) to avoid confusion with these archaic groups.…”

“…Genetic phylogenetic analyses resolve that Gregory's [] century‐old Archonta (sans bats) is a natural grouping [e.g., Adkins & Honeycutt, ], and paleontological analysis of plesiadapiforms show they are nested adjacent to Primates, but within the extant archontan group of dermopterans and tree‐shrews [Bloch et al, ; Silcox et al, ]. There have been no viable, long‐lived departures from this hypothesis except for short episodes linking plesiadapiforms to dermopterans [Hoffstetter, ], like the one in which plesiadapiforms were linked with dermopterans based on misinterpreted fossil finger evidence [Beard, , ; see Krause, ].…”

“…The early primate‐like plesiadapiforms are usually grouped into several families (half a dozen to a dozen) including the better‐known groups Microsyopidae, Micromomyidae, Paromomyidae, Carpolestidae, and Plesiadapidae [Bloch et al, ; Conroy, ; Fleagle, ; Rose, ]. The plesiadapiforms are found in Paleocene and Eocene deposits of Europe and North America, and range in size from that of a mouse to a large domestic cat [Gingerich, ; Kay & Cartmill, ; Silcox et al, ; Silcox & Gunnell, ]. In some ways, they did not look like modern primates.…”

A ‘giant’ purgatoriid (Plesiadapiformes) from the Paleocene of Montana, USA: mosaic evolution in the earliest primates

“…Eisenberg , table 43), although the molars of Purgatorius have been widely interpreted as reflecting an omnivorous diet, with the intake of ‘softer plant foods’ (Szalay and Delson , p. 45; also Szalay ; Silcox et al . ; Silcox and Gunnell ). The larger lower canines and longer, more trenchant molar crests of U. perpetior may imply a more insectivorous diet of that species, but one that in any case probably differed importantly from that of Purgatorius , a species of which also occurs at Simpson Quarry (Buckley ), sympatric with U .…”

Potential arms race in the coevolution of primates and angiosperms: brazzein sweet proteins and gorilla taste receptors

“…(Sussman, ). The evolutionary emergence of the primate order around the Paleocene–Eocene boundary (Steiper & Seiffert, ) is concurrent with the spread and diversification of angiosperms (Eriksson ; Silcox, Sargis, Bloch, & Boyer, ; Sussman, ). Primates obtain energy from fruiting plants, and plants exploit the mobility of primates to disperse their seeds (Jordano, Forget, Lambert, Böhning‐Gaese, & Traveset, ).…”