Was there Primates during the times of the dinosaurs?

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1208733

2026-08-09 11:10

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The taxonomic grade "Prosimii" (prosimians) is no longer considered phylogenetically valid, it's a paraphyletic grouping of primates that are "neither monkeys nor apes". However, it is entirely possible that early primates lived during the Cretaceous, the last epoch of the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. No fossils have been found (some questionable material belonging to an early plesiadapiform Purgatorius has been attributed as Cretaceous in origin, but it's possible that this material was accidentally re-buried in a Cretaceous stratum at a later date). The earliest definite primate known from the fossil record is Plesiadapis, which lived some 55 million years ago, 10 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct. However, molecular clock studies indicate that the primate order may have arisen 85 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous. Certainly, primate ancestors were alive at this time, though whether they could be placed in the order Primates is still an open question. It is very likely that if you were to see one of these early primates/primate ancestors today, you would think it was some strange kind of shrew, rather than a primate as such, since they did not yet physically resemble the monkeys, apes or even lemurs of later epochs.

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