Exam 9: Primate Origins and Evolution: the First 50 Million Years

The most likely contender for the common ancestor of all later catarrhines is

The skeleton of most Miocene apes was more similar to which of the following?

A press release on the findings from a dig in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming reports the finding of a series of extinct primate fossils that may be a link between plesiadapiforms and later primates due to an opposable big toe.The find is likely

It is now a desert, but ________ the Fayum region of Egypt was a wet tropical forest.

A fossil primate with legs and arms of about equal length would most likely have gotten around using which form of locomotion?

While reading a journal article on the evolution of primate characteristics, you note that the author supports the arboreal hypothesis as the driver of the primate evolution.Which of the following arguments could you develop in response to this article?

The very large baboon-like monkey (up to 80 kg or 176 lbs) that lived during the African Plio-Pleistocene was

Which of these physical traits did not characterize the Adapids?

Early fossil primates from the Eocene would most likely have shared their habitat with

Name and briefly describe the three main models, or hypotheses, of primate origins.

Which Eocene primate from China has recently been proposed as an extremely primitive, and tiny, anthropoid?

The plesiadapiform genus that had an opposable big toe with a nail at the end and therefore may be ancestral to euprimates is

If you traveled back in time to Africa about 27 mya and came across a group of the early ape Proconsul feeding in a tree, what would you not expect to see these animals doing?

The northern African fossil primate called Biretia may be an early anthropoid, based on the morphology of its

The first true primates (euprimates) appear in the fossil record about ________ .

Why is the Fayum depression in Egypt such an important site for understanding the origin and diversification of anthropoid primates?

Which of the following is not true of the fossil ape Oreopithecus?

If you are examining the fossil remains of the genus Dryopithecus, they are most likely from where?

Which fossil group is characterized by an eye orbit fully enclosed by bone?

Sivapithecus is widely recognized as an ancestral member of which ape lineage?