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Mar. 1, 2021
The earliest primate of all lived with dinosaurs, a team of American researchers suggests, based on the discovery that at least two species of them were already running around about 100,000 years after the mass extinction that all but wiped out those terrible lizards. The little furry things almost certainly had to have evolved earlier, which means they lived with dinosaurs. Including the big ones.
It’s true that these archaic primates were more like an arboreal rat than a B movie actor armed with a time machine and a jeep. But it’s awesome to think that our ancestors, albeit extremely distant ones, were dodging T. rexes. Though to be honest, the archaic primates were so small T. rex couldn’t have used them for much except maybe to floss its teeth with their tails.
Primates Appeared Almost Immediately After Dinosaurs Went Extinct, New Research Suggests
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Our earliest primate ancestors rapidly spread after dinosaur extinction
The small, furry ancestors of all primates a group that includes humans and other apes were already taking to the trees a mere 100,000 years after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other terrestrial animals, according to a new analysis of fossil teeth in the collections of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP).
The analysis showed that the teeth are the earliest-known fossil evidence of any primate, dating from about 65.9 million years ago 105,000 to 139,000 years after Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary 66 million years ago that signaled the end of the dinosaur era, except for the dinosaurs’ descendants, the birds.
The researchers analyzed several fossils of
Purgatorius, the oldest genus in a group of the earliest-known primates called plesiadapiforms. These ancient mammals were small-bodied and ate specialized diets of insects and fruits that varied by species.
These newly described specimens are central to understanding primate ancestry and paint a picture of how life on land recovered after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago that wiped out all dinosaurs except for birds and led to the rise of mammals.
The team analyzed fossilized teeth found in the Hell Creek area of northeastern Montana. The fossils, now part of the collections at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, are estimated to be 65.9 million years old, about 105,000 to 139,000 years after the mass extinction event.
An artist’s rendering shows the early primate species known as Purgatorius mckeeveri. (Andrey Atuchin Illustration via Burke Museum)
The shapes of fossilized teeth from 65.9 million-year-old, squirrel-like creatures suggest that the branch of the tree of life that gave rise to us humans and other primates flowered while dinosaurs still walked the earth.
That’s the claim coming from a team of 10 researchers across the U.S., including biologists at Seattle’s Burke Museum and the University of Washington.
In a study published by Royal Society Open Science, the team lays out evidence that an ancient group of primates known as plesiadapiforms must have emerged before the mass-extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs. (Technically, modern-day birds are considered the descendants of dinosaurs, but that’s another story.)
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