Most people imagine our early primate ancestors swinging through lush tropical forests. However, recent studies have shown that they can withstand cold temperatures.
As an ecologist who has studied chimpanzees and lemurs in the field in Uganda and Madagascar, I am fascinated by the environments that shaped our primate ancestors. These new discoveries overturn decades of assumptions about how and where our lineage began.
The question of our own evolution is of fundamental importance in understanding who we are. The same forces that shaped our ancestors have shaped us and will shape our future.
Climate has always been a major factor driving ecological and evolutionary change in which species survive, which adapt, and which disappear. And as the planet warms, the lessons of the past are more important than ever.
cold truth
This new scientific study by Jorge Avaria Llautureo from the University of Reading and other researchers maps the geographic origins of our primate ancestors and the historical climates of those locations. The results are surprising: rather than evolving in warm, tropical environments, as scientists previously thought, early primates appear to have lived in cold, dry regions.
These environmental challenges likely played an important role in helping our ancestors adapt, evolve, and spread to other regions. Studies show that it took millions of years for primates to colonize the tropics. Rising global temperatures do not appear to be accelerating the spread of primates or the evolution of new species. However, rapid changes between dry and wet climates caused evolutionary changes.
One of the earliest known primates was Tejardinaa small tree-dwelling animal weighing only 28 grams, similar to the Madame Berthe mouse lemur, the smallest primate alive today. Because it’s so small, Tejardina I had to eat a high-calorie diet of fruits, gum, and insects.
fossils suggest Tejardina Unlike other mammals of the time, it had claws rather than claws, which helped it grasp branches and handle food. This is an important characteristic of primates to this day. Tejardina They appeared about 56 million years ago (about 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs), and the species rapidly dispersed from its origins in North America to Europe and China.
It’s easy to see why scientists assumed that primates evolved in warm, humid climates. Currently, most primates live in the tropics, and most primate fossils have also been excavated there.
But when the scientists involved in the new study used fossil spore and pollen data from the fossil environment of early primates to predict the climate, they found that the place was not tropical at the time. Primates actually originated in North America (again, contrary to what scientists once believed, in part because there are no primates in North America today).
Some primates also colonized arctic regions. These early primates may have lived much like today’s rat and dwarf lemur species, surviving seasonal cold temperatures and associated food scarcity by slowing their metabolism and even hibernating.
Difficult and variable conditions may have favored primates that migrate frequently in search of food and better habitat. The primates that exist today are descendants of these highly mobile ancestors. People with low mobility left no descendants that survive today.
From the past to the future
This research shows the value of studying extinct animals and the environments they lived in. Today, if we want to protect primate species, we need to know how they are threatened and how to respond to those threats. Understanding evolutionary responses to climate change is important for protecting the world’s primates and other species.
When habitat is lost, often through deforestation, primates are no longer able to move freely. With fewer populations and restricted to smaller, less diverse regions, today’s primates lack the genetic diversity to adapt to changing environments.
But saving the world’s primate species will require more than knowledge and understanding, and it will take political action and changes in individual behavior to tackle bushmeat consumption, the main reason primates are hunted by humans, and to reverse habitat loss and climate change. Otherwise, all primates, including us, will be at risk of extinction.
