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Thus, there are at least three common, or traditional, uses of the term "ape": non-specialists may not distinguish between "monkeys" and "apes", that is, they may use the two terms interchangeably; or they may use "ape" for any tailless monkey or non-human hominoid; or they may use the term "ape" to just mean the non-human hominoids.
The Old World species are divided into apes and monkeys depending on the number of cusps on their molars: monkeys have four, apes have five [73] - although humans may have four or five. [79] The main hominid molar cusp evolved in early primate history, while the cusp of the corresponding primitive lower molar (paraconid) was lost. Prosimians ...
This clade, containing the Old World monkeys and the apes, diverged from a common ancestor with the New World monkeys around 45 to 55 million years ago. [ 4 ] [ need quotation to verify ] The individual species of Old World monkey are more closely related to each other than to apes or any other grouping, with a common ancestor around 14 million ...
[31] [32] Also, a few monkey species have the word "ape" in their common name, such as the Barbary ape. Later in the first half of the 20th century, the idea developed that there were trends in primate evolution and that the living members of the order could be arranged in a series, leading through "monkeys" and "apes" to humans. [33]
The New World monkeys in parvorder Platyrrhini split from the rest of the simian line about 40 million years ago (mya), leaving the parvorder Catarrhini occupying the Old World. This latter group split about 25 mya between the Cercopithecidae and the apes maming Cercopithecidae more closely related to the apes than to the Platyrrhini.
Although several species lack tails, and their common names refer to them as apes, these are true monkeys, with no greater relationship to the true apes than any other Old World monkeys. Instead, this comes from an earlier definition of 'ape' that included primates generally. [7]
The distinction between apes and monkeys is complicated by the traditional paraphyly of monkeys: apes emerged as a sister group of Old World monkeys in the catarrhines, which are a sister group of New World monkeys.
Mandrills and baboons are monkeys; the rest of the species on this list are apes. Typically, Old World monkeys (paleotropical) are larger than New World monkeys (neotropical); the reasons for this are not entirely understood but several hypotheses have been generated. [3]