Define the following terms: • Primates • Fossils • Species • Artefacts
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Answer:
All primates are descended from tree-dwellers, exhibiting adaptations which allow for tree climbing that include: a rotating shoulder joint, separated big toes and thumb for grasping, and stereoscopic vision.
Other primate characteristics include: having one offspring per pregnancy, claws evolved into flattened nails; and larger brain/body ratio than other mammals, and tendency to hold body upright.
True primates, ancestral to prosimians, first appear in the fossil record in the Eocene epoch around 55 million years ago; they were similar in form to lemurs.
Anthropoids ancestral to both Old World and New World monkeys appear in the fossil record in the Oligocene epoch around 35 million years ago.
Anthropoids ancestral to apes appear in the Miocene epoch around 25 million years ago.
Apes are divided into two main groups of hominoids: lesser apes or hylobatids (gibbons and siamangs) and great apes (Pongo: orangutans, Gorilla: gorillas, Pan:chimpanzees, and Homo: humans).
dimorphism: the occurrence in an animal species of two distinct types of individual
adaptive radiation: the diversification of species into separate forms that each adapt to occupy a specific environmental niche