PRIMATE ORIGINS - PLUGGING THE GAPS

Recent discoveries of fossil primate specimens have produced several s urprises and challenged prevailing views of early primate evolution. P lesiadapiforms, long regarded as 'archaic primates', may perhaps be li nked to the peculiar colugos instead. Inferred relationships of the ea rliest known undoubted primates (adapids and omomyids) are in turmoil. Both groups have been proposed as sources for the simian primates. Al though the origin of the simian primates is obscure, new fossil eviden ce could push it further back by at least 10 million years. Such uncer tainties reflect the low sampling level of the primate fossil record, which can potentially also lead to underestimation of times of origin within the primate tree.