Abstract
In the fossil record of the Upper Cretaceous there are traces of the mammalian groups that later diversified in the Tertiary. One of the most tantalizing of these precursors is the fossil of a single tooth that appears to have belonged to a very primitive representative of the line of vertebrates called primates. Humans are primates. The animal that owned the tooth is appropriately called Purgatorius, after Purgatory Hill in the Hell Creek Formation.
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Further Reading
Brain, C.K. & A. Sillen 1988. Evidence from the Swartkrans cave for the earliest use of fire. Nature 336,464–6.
Reader, J. &J. Gurche 1986. The rise of life: the first 3.5 billion years. New York: A.A. Knopf/London: Roxby.
Simons, E.L. 1989. Human origins. Science 245, 1343–50.
Walker, A. & M. Teaford 1989. The hunt for Proconsul. Scientific American 260, 76–82.
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© 1991 Springer Netherlands
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Nisbet, E.G. (1991). Humanity . In: Living Earth. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3056-1_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3056-1_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-04-445855-5
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