adapiform

adapiform, any of several dozen extinct species of primates of the suborder Strepsirrhini (a group that includes lemurs, lorises, and galagos). Adapiforms flourished in Eurasia, North America, and Africa during the Eocene Epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago) and are thought to be among the earliest and most primitive primates to appear in the fossil record.

Distribution

Although some classifications place all adapiforms in the family Adapidae, most divide them among three families: Adapidae, Sivaladapidae, and Notharctidae. With few exceptions, the different groups of adapiforms lived on different continents, which precluded competition between the groups. The family Adapidae inhabited western Europe during the latter half of the Eocene, although it probably originated in Asia. In contrast, the family Sivaladapidae was found only in Asia. Notharctidae is divided into the subfamilies Notharctinae and Cercamoniinae; the notharctines were found primarily in North America, whereas the cercamoniines were distributed across parts of Africa, Europe, and possibly even Asia, in addition to North America. Most adapiform lineages went extinct when the global climate became cooler and drier near the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (approximately 34 million years ago), but the sivaladapids survived in southern Asia until about 7 million years ago, late in the Miocene Epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago).

Evolution and classification

Adapiforms inhabited forested environments and were probably active during the daytime. They were the first primates to evolve a body mass that averaged greater than 500 grams (about 18 ounces), a development that enabled them to exploit the ecological niche of arboreal folivory (leaf-eating) earlier than most other mammals. (As body mass increases, metabolic rates slow, making it more likely that an animal, such as an adapiform, could subsist on a diet of fruit and leaves.) The small eye sockets, or orbits, of most adapiforms suggest that their lifestyle was diurnal. (Nocturnal primates, in contrast, tend to have enlarged eye sockets.) The large relative body size and the diurnal activity pattern of most adapiforms distinguishes this group from most other Eocene primates, which tended to be smaller and were often nocturnal. Also, some physical traits shared by certain adapiforms and living and fossil anthropoids (that is, the group that includes extinct and extant monkeys, apes, and humans) resulted from an evolutionary convergence—where analogous structures derived from different conditions became increasingly similar in appearance through time—and, thus, some adapiforms have been viewed as potential “missing links” between early primates and the anthropoids. Prominent examples of this phenomenon include the African adapiform Afradapis longicristatus and the European adapiform Darwinius masillae. For example, Afradapis and many living anthropoids possess fused mandibular symphyses (articulations), spatulate incisors, enlarged canines, and a reduced number of premolars, whereas the earliest and most primitive anthropoid fossils lack these features.

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Well-preserved examples of several members of the family Adapidae have been excavated from Eocene karst fissure fillings in the Quercy region of southern France, and, thus, paleontologists have a reasonably complete picture of their paleobiology. Adapis parisiensis, from which the family Adapidae is named, was the first fossil primate to be described, in 1822, even though its primate affinities were not recognized until several decades later. Originally documented by a badly crushed skull and lower jaw from the Montmartre gypsum quarries on the outskirts of Paris, A. parisiensis was first described as a small “pachyderm” by French zoologist and statesman Georges Cuvier, the father of paleontology.

Adapids spanned a wide range of body sizes, from the diminutive Adapoides troglodytes, which weighed roughly 300 grams (about 11 ounces), to the robust Leptadapis magnus, which weighed as much as 9 kg (about 20 pounds), making it one of the largest known Eocene primates. Most adapids had sharply crested teeth that were specialized for folivory. The skulls of well-documented forms, such as Adapis and Leptadapis, bore large sagittal and nuchal crests (bony projections along the midline and the back of the skull, respectively), indicating hypertrophied development (enlargement) of the temporalis muscles, which would have enabled powerful repetitive chewing. Endocasts (casts of the cranial cavity) revealed that the brain of Adapis was very small (less than 9 cubic cm [0.5 cubic inch]) for a primate its size, but its olfactory lobes remained large, suggesting a heavy reliance on the sense of smell. Skeletal anatomy indicates that Adapis and Leptadapis were slow, deliberate climbers.

Notharctus and its close relatives in the family Notharctidae were abundant members of Eocene faunas of western North America. Clear differences in the sizes and shapes of the canine teeth among individuals of N. venticolus suggest that this species exhibited sexually dimorphic canines, a feature that commonly occurs in living and fossil monkeys and apes. The body proportions of Notharctus were very lemurlike, with hind limbs longer than the forelimbs. Its hips and knees indicate that these animals were capable of vertical clinging and leaping in arboreal environments; this is a distinctive mode of locomotion that is also practiced by many living lemurs.

Unlike other adapiforms, the widely distributed Cercamoniinae are enigmatic, to the extent that they may not be a natural or monophyletic group, because all the descendants of their common ancestor may not be known at present. Their evolutionary relationships remain unclear; some paleontologists have proposed, however, that cercamoniines are closely related to adapids. The cercamoniine fossil record ranges from Texas (where Mahgarita was discovered in 1973) to Switzerland (the site of the discovery of Caenopithecus in 1862) to Egypt (where Afradapis was discovered in 2009).

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Asian sivaladapids remain poorly documented anatomically, especially in comparison with notharctines and adapids. The cheek teeth of larger sivaladapids, such as Sivaladapis and Guangxilemur, were clearly adapted for folivory, but those of smaller taxa such as Paukkaungia likely evolved for a diet primarily of fruits.