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The arboreal theory claims that primates evolved from their ancestors by adapting to arboreal life. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It was proposed by Grafton Elliot Smith (1912), a neuroanatomist who was chiefly concerned with the emergence of the primate brain.
The Orbits of Arboreal Mammals: A Reassessment of the Arboreal Theory of Primate Evolution (1970) Matthew Cartmill is an American anthropologist and professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University , where he formerly served as Chair of Anthropology.
Other similar basal primates were widespread in Eurasia and Africa during the tropical conditions of the Paleocene and Eocene. Purgatorius is the genus of the four extinct species believed to be the earliest example of a primate or a proto-primate, a primatomorph precursor to the Plesiadapiformes, dating to as old as 66 million years ago.
The tarsian hypothesis of Jones, which he held to from 1918 [13] until his death, claimed that the human line of development did not diverge from that of apes or monkeys but from much earlier, before the Oligocene 30 million years ago, from a common ancestor with a primitive primate group of which the only other survivor is the Tarsier. [14]
These features are more developed in monkeys and apes, and noticeably less so in lorises and lemurs. Some primates, including gorillas, humans and baboons, are primarily ground-dwelling rather than arboreal, but all species have adaptations for climbing trees.
This is a list of fossil primates—extinct primates for which a fossil record exists. Primates are generally thought to have evolved from a small, unspecialized mammal, which probably fed on insects and fruits. However, the precise source of the primates remains controversial and even their arboreal origin has recently been questioned. [1]
Galago leaping. Vertical clinging and leaping (VCL) is a type of arboreal locomotion seen most commonly among the strepsirrhine primates and haplorrhine tarsiers.The animal begins at rest with its torso upright and elbows fixed, with both hands clinging to a vertical support, such as the side of a tree or bamboo stalk.
Pettigrew suggested that flying foxes, colugos, and primates were all descendants of the same group of early arboreal mammals. The megabat flight and the colugo gliding could be both seen as locomotory adaptations to a life high above the ground. The flying primate hypothesis met resistance from many zoologists.