Primates: Evolution, Habitat, and Diversity

1.1 Study Background

Primate (Latin: "prime, first rank"), which includes prosimians and simians ( Goodman, Tagle, Fitch, Bailey, Czelusniak ,and Koop ,1990). Primates are descendent that emerge from their predecessor that lived in the trees of tropical forests; A lot of primate features shows how they adapt to survive in this demanding habitat.Majority of the primate species are pertain to trees.

Besides humans, who occupy each continent, majority primates live in tropical regions of the Africa ,Asia and also America(Anon ,1911). They are very different in size from Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, which is only 30 g (1 oz.), whereas the eastern lowland gorilla, is over 200 kg (440 lb.). According to fossil evidence, the early predecessor of primates might have been existed in the late Cretaceous period which was between 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago; an early close primate relative known from ample that still remains is the Late Paleocene Plesiadapis, circa 55–58 million years ago (Chatterjee, Ho, Barnes and Groves ,2009). The primate branch might be even older than first thought, emerging in mid-Cretaceous era which was around 85 million years ago as being suggested by the molecular clock study (Chatterjee et al. 2009).

Prosimians attributes are mostly more those of the early primates, and comprises the lemurs of Madagascar, lorisoids, and tarsiers (Groves, 2001).. Simians covers the monkeys, apes and hominins.Recently, taxonomists are more favored to separate primates to the suborder Strepsirrhini, or wet-nosed