Lemurs evolved on the island of Madagascar, for at least 40 million years. An ancestral lemur population is thought to have inadvertently rafted to the island on a floating mat of vegetation. Since the arrival of humans approximately 2,000 years ago, lemurs are now restricted to 10% of the island, or approximately 60,000 square kilometers, with many facing extinction.
About Evolution of lemurs in brief
Lemurs are primates belonging to the suborder Strepsirrhini which branched off from other primates less than 63 million years ago. Lemurs evolved on the island of Madagascar, for at least 40 million years. An ancestral lemur population is thought to have inadvertently rafted to the island on a floating mat of vegetation. Since the arrival of humans approximately 2,000 years ago, lemurs are now restricted to 10% of the island, or approximately 60,000 square kilometers, with many facing extinction. They include the smallest primates in the world, and once included some of the largest. They share ancestral traits with early primates, such as lorises, pottos, and galagos, but are not ancestral to modern monkeys, apes, and humans. They have diversified to fill many niches normally filled by other types of mammals, including the tooth-comb, toilet-claw, and tarsiers. They also share common ancestry with lorisoids, an unusual trait that is unlikely to have evolved twice or more than once. They are the only primates that share an unusual toothcomb with the strepsir rhinoceros, a species that once lived in the same region of Africa. The closest relatives of primates are the extinct plesiadapiforms, the modern colugos, and treeshrews. The relationship between known fossil primate families remains unclear. The last common ancestor of all primates dates to around 79.
6 mya, although the earliest known fossil primates are only 54–55 million years old. Until recently, they were thought to be descended directly from the diverse group of adapiformes due to several shared postcranial traits, as well as long snouts and small brains. In 2009, a highly publicized and scientifically criticized publication proclaimed that a 47-million-year-oldAdapiform fossil, Darwinius masillae, demonstrated both adapomin and simian traits, making it a transitional form between the prosimian and siman lineages. Media sources inaccurately dubbed the fossil as a missing link between lemur and humans, but it is likely to be related to an early Asian branch of cercamoniine adapracts. This conclusion is also corroborated by the fact that the fossil was found in Africa and not in the Middle East as previously thought. It is also possible that lemur-like auditory bullae, a prosimians characteristic, had smaller brains and longer snouts than lemururs. The earliest known true primates are represented by the fossil groups Omomyidae, Eosimiidae, and Adapiformedes. A consensus is emerging that places omomyids as a sister group to tarsier, eosimids, and Djebelemur, as a stem group to simians, and the latter two as stem groups to modern strepsorrhines, including le murs.
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This page is based on the article Evolution of lemurs published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
