By the time humans arrived on the scene, the dinosaurs had long since disappeared from the Earth’s surface. However, recent discoveries suggest that the seed of human creation (and other primates) was already growing when the powerful dinosaurs were still walking the planet. Fossils of the oldest known primate life form have been analyzed to find that they lived around 65.9 million years ago. As a reference, dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago. Fossils belong to the genus Purgatorius which most biologists recognize belong to a group plesiadapiformes– oldest known primate.
These small mammals were quite different from any of the successors we recognize today. Elaborating on the importance of this discovery, the oldest occurrence of archaic primates, author Stephen Chester said, “It adds to our understanding of how the first primates separated from their competitors after the extinction of the dinosaurs.” .
Based on tooth-fossil analysis, the team estimates that these animals (which are the ancestor of all known primates, including monkeys, lemurs, and even humans), probably evolved by the end of the year. Cretaceous– which means they lived next to large dinosaurs. This discovery has been called an important step in increasing “our understanding of the environmental, biological, and social dependencies that ultimately led to the evolution of primates” according to Peter Tolias, dean of the School of Natural and Behavioral Sciences.
Recently, another paper established that the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs was definitely an asteroid impact 66 million years ago. This implies that everything that brought out the powerful dinos was survived by our ancestor and led to the eventual recovery of life on the planet.
Chester has been involved in many innovative primate discoveries. He co-authored an article in 2015 that studied ankle bones Purgatorius and established these ancestors of primates living in trees survived the impact of the asteroid long after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Prior to this new discovery, the oldest known primate fossil was 55 million years ago. It belonged to a lemur-like mammal and was discovered in China in 2013. It was called the animal. Archicebus achilles. (Long after the extinction of all dinosaurs). This study has been published in the Royal Society Open Science.