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Phylogeny, Adaptations, and Dispersal of the Tarsiiform Primates

  • Chapter
Phylogeny of the Primates

Abstract

The populations of the southeast Asian Tarsius are the only living representatives of a group of primates that once flourished in dazzling variety and abundance. The heyday of these small primates, as far as we know, was the Eocene. They were clearly differentiated from a lemuriform ancestry somewhere in the Paleocene and survived into the Miocene. Unlike their contemporaries, the lumuriform adapids which produced species as large as Leptadapis magnus, or the several species of Pelycodus or Notharctus, no known tarsiiform is larger than a South American capuchin or uakari (Fig. 1). What the known tarsiiforms lacked in size, however, they apparently made up in the diversity of their known structural adaptations. This is particularly true of the dentition, hitherto their best known aspect. As inferred from the dental differences, their feeding regimes were probably highly diversified, and, one may suspect, this was also true of the locomotor habits of the various species, although, admittedly, the postcranial morphology is not very well known.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, New York, USA

    Frederick S. Szalay

  2. The American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, USA

    Frederick S. Szalay

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  1. Frederick S. Szalay
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

    W. Patrick Luckett

  2. Hunter College, C.U.N.Y., New York, New York, USA

    Frederick S. Szalay

  3. The American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, USA

    Frederick S. Szalay

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© 1975 Plenum Press, New York

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Szalay, F.S. (1975). Phylogeny, Adaptations, and Dispersal of the Tarsiiform Primates. In: Luckett, W.P., Szalay, F.S. (eds) Phylogeny of the Primates. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2166-8_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2166-8_15

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