Til E ADAPTATIONS OF THE PRIMATES 



PROFESSOR F. B. LOOMIS, 

 Amherst, Mass. 



The development of the primates has taken place in 

 regions of comparatively high temperatures, especially 

 in tropical and semitropical climate. This is chiefly due 

 to their arboreal adaptation, which keeps them where 

 the trees throughout the year offer food either as fruit, 

 leaves, blossoms, insects or small animals. 



The first primates are yet to be found, but they doubtless 

 lived either during the last of the Cretaceous or in the 

 earliest Eocene; for during the Lower Eocene of the Wa- 

 satch epoch there suddenly appeal 1 in America two well- 

 distinguished families of primates, the general feeders 

 or Xotliarctid;i\ and the fruit eaters or Anaptomorphi- 

 dae. 1 Between these no intermediate or ancestral group 

 is known, but the wide divergence in form would indicate 

 a considerable time element for development. The gen- 

 era Anaptomorphus and Pelycodus appear in America 

 as a part of the wave of migration which introduces for 

 the first time representatives of the modern groups of 

 mammals. Somewhat later the primates appear in Eng- 

 land and France, apparently part of the same original 

 stock but differing slightly as a result of independent 

 development. 



The original group of primates or ancestral stock seems 

 to have been a large-brained arboreal insectivor, some- 

 what similar to the tree shrews (Tupaiidie). Appar- 

 ently their home was to the north in the Hudson Bay 



