AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Primates are relative newcomers on our planet. The earliest ones are found in the fossil record dating to 50-55 million years ago. These first prosimians thrived during the Eocene Epoch.

Detailed explanation-2: -Primates became more abundant in the middle Paleocene; they displayed characteristics intermediate between the insectivores and the lemurs, especially in their dental anatomy. Late in the Paleocene, mammalian evolution showed a trend toward larger forms and more varied assemblages.

Detailed explanation-3: -Today’s apes are few in number and in kind. But between 22 million and 5.5 million years ago, a time known as the Miocene epoch, apes ruled the primate world. Up to 100 ape species ranged throughout the Old World, from France to China in Eurasia and from Kenya to Namibia in Africa.

Detailed explanation-4: -The earliest possible primates date to the Paleocene (65-56 mya) and belong to a large and diverse group of primitive mammals called the plesiadapiforms.

Detailed explanation-5: -The team, led by Bloch, is proposing that a group of archaic mammals called plesiadapiforms (please-ee-ah-dape-i-forms) that lived in a slice of time called the Paleocene-between 65 and 55 million years ago, just after the dinosaurs disappeared-are in fact the earliest ancestors of primates.