ART. 1. PRIMATES OF THE FORT UNION — GIDLEY. 21 



pithecini, as already stated, includes the living Tarsius and part of 

 the Eocene genera which later were referred to the Tarsiidae by 

 Matthew; while in the Neopothecini, Wortman included Omomys 

 and Waslialcius, (also referred by Matthew to the Tarsiidae) and the 

 Adapidae, together with all the Old World families of living Anthro- 

 popoidea and those of the New World except the Hapalidae. 



The foregoing, in brief, seems to be about the present status of that 

 part of the controversy which concerns the subject here under consid- 

 eration. Gregory's views, based on later studies and somewhat fuller 

 data, have received the wider acceptance. But the present restudy 

 of the Eocene Primates, supplemented by the new material from the 

 Fort Union beds described above, has brought to light certain fea- 

 tures which lead me to views differing widely from those held by 

 Gregory regarding both the extreme primitive character of these early 

 forms and their relationships to the modern groups. Wortman's 

 views in part seem to agree more nearly with my own interpretation 

 of the facts, although his conclusions, especially regarding classifica- 

 tion, apparently will require modifications in several very important 

 particulars. 



In this connection should be noted more fully Matthew's compre- 

 hensive revision of the Eocene Primates to which reference has already 

 been made.^^ In this revision Matthew has most admirably worked 

 out, so far as can be done on present known material, the interrela- 

 tionships of the Eocene Primates, some of the genera and families 

 being for the first time adequately defined. Two groups of undoubted 

 primate affinities (the Adapidae and the Tarsiidae) were here recog- 

 nized, and it was suggested that "some or all of the genera of the 

 families Apatemyidae and Mixodectidae, here placed as Insectivora, 

 may when better known have to be transferred to the Primates." 

 Matthew included under the first family the American forms Notliarc- 

 tus Leidy and Pelycodus Cope as genera representing two successive 

 stages of a single phylum. Under the Tarsiid group he recognized 

 provisionally nine American Eocene genera as being more or less 

 closely related forms of Tarsiid type, and because of the lack of knowl- 

 edge of many of them by which they might be placed in families or 

 subfamilies and adequately defined, he arranged them, with the living 

 genus Tarsius, under a very convenient classificatory key of five 

 major divisions. 



The material from the Fort Union seems entirely to confirm 

 Matthew's general conception of the early Primates in their relation 

 to each other as expressed in this revision, but lends no support, as 

 already intimated, to the prevailing ideas of their relationship to the 

 modern groups of the order, except as regards Tarsius. 



'•Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hibt., vol. 34, 1915, pp. 429-483. 



