The primate order includes 190-400 species, with 10% threatened with extinction. They have five digits on each hand and toes on each foot, large brains, and arboreal lifestyles. They are divided into prosimians, New World monkeys, and Old World monkeys. The order originated 63 million years ago and evolved into modern lemurs, tarsiers, apes, and humans.
Primates are an order of placental mammals comprising between 190 and 400 species, depending on whether certain groups are considered subspecies or true distinct species. The number of species is sometimes exaggerated for reasons of environmental protection, as about 10% of the world’s primates are threatened with extinction. Species include lemurs, monkeys, the rare aye-aye, lorises, pottos, galagos, angwantibos, tarsiers, titis, sakis, uakaris, marmosets, tamarins, capuchins, macaques, baboons, mangabeys, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, drills, mandrills and many others, including humans.
Some of the characteristics of this order are five digits on each hand and toes on each foot, large brain-to-body ratios, great size diversity, and manual dexterity. They improved vision with the simultaneous sacrifice of the size of noses and olfactory centers in the brain and arboreal lifestyles, including hands and an upper body specialized for grasping tree branches. Their social behavior includes complex dominance hierarchies and they have long gestation periods and lifespans. It is well known that some primates, particularly apes (which include humans), are among the most intelligent of all mammals, and indeed of all terrestrial life.
Informally, this order is classified into three main groups: prosimians, which live in Madagascar and Southeast Asia; New World monkeys; and monkeys and Old World monkeys. Of these, proshims, like lemurs, are the most primitive, with small sizes and long snouts. More formally, the order is divided into two monophyletic suborders (descended from a common ancestor): the primates Strepsirrhini (“wet nose”), which includes all non-tarsier prosimians, and the primates Haplorrhini (“dry nose”), which includes tarsiers, monkeys and monkeys.
Primates have been around since 63 million years ago, just 2.5 million years after the mass extinction that killed off the non-avian dinosaurs. The order originated with early strepsirrhine animals which are the ancestors of modern lemurs. Tarsiers represented the first group of the dry-nosed group, splitting off from wet-nosed animals about 58 million years ago, while primitive apes and their cousins split off about 40 million years ago. The homonids (the family that includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) emerged just about 7 million years ago, with humans having evolved just 0.2 million years ago.
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