Did all primates originate in Africa and did they historically only live there?

Question

my question is after mammals came into existence and the continents have split did primates exclusively only live and evolve in africa or were there primates all over the world? If there were, why is it only the primates from africa that later evolved into humanoids and even replace already existing humanoids such as homo erectus with newer humanoids like us homo sapiens? Is it the geographical position of the continent (being in the center) or the weather system that makes it favorable to evolving advanced species?

Answer 1

Primate did originate in Africa around 60 million years ago, right after dinosaur extinction, but soon after, tarsiers, lorises, lemurs and monkeys spread over tropical Africa and Asia.



40 million years ago a few monkeys arrived in South America, maybe on board a vegetation raft. Then they evolved into hundreds of modern New World Monkey species.



25 million years ago, apes speciated among African monkeys. Then they split into great apes (aka hominids) in Africa and lesser apes those migrated to Asia.



16 million years ago, a few hominids migrated from Africa to Asia, then evolved into the orangutan branch



9 million years ago, remaining African apes split into gorilla and hominini.



6 million years ago, hominini split into Homo and Pan (chimpanzees) genera, both in Africa.



1.8 million years ago, humans (Homo ergaster/erectus) spread out of Africa into Asia and Europe, and evolved into various local species/subspecies including H. sapiens in Africa/Middle-East (us), Neanderthals in Europe and some others.



60,000 years ago, a small group of African Homo sapiens spread all over the World.



Monkey/apes evolve everywhere into hundreds of species, 274 are still alive, we are just one of them.



However, in the last 3 million years Africa has faced severe climate changes. Intelligence along with bipedalism and omnivorous diet has been they best ticket to deal with those changes.

The most successful species among all primates is the smartest, the one that can walk long distances and eat whatever they find: animals (hunted with hand made weapons), roots (only digestible when cooked on fire). In cold season, they wear other animal fur (expecting thicker fur from natural evolution is way too long).



Other primates had to stay in their tropical forest, and eventually become extinct with the forest.

Most of them are now endangered species.



@ JZ



You're right, there were quite bipedal hominids 6 million years ago.

However, it seems bipedalism wasn't that beneficial back then. By the way, Orrorin (Orrorin tugenensis - 6 Mya) close to human-chimp split was a better biped than both later Australopithecines and modern chimpanzees. Lucy for example (A. afarensis - 3.2 Mya) walked awkwardly with a rolling gait because of her pelvis-femur geometry, so did very first humans (H. habilis - 2.4 Mya)



Humans became real tall savanna runners 2 to 1.8 Mya (H. ergaster, H. erectus). They also became smarter and started out of Africa migrations in the same period.



The kick-off event seems to be the Isthmus of Panama creation 3 Mya rerouting ocean currents.

This changed dramatically Earth climate: glaciation cycle, creation of ice caps...



Human wasn't the best adapted species to one particular climate, but intelligence, omnivorism and bipedalism gave us a faster adaptability to changing conditions.

Answer 2

Habitat and distribution[edit]See also: List of primates by population



Rhesus macaque at Agra Fort, IndiaPrimates evolved from arboreal animals, and many species live most of their lives in trees. Most primate species live in tropical rain forests. The number of primate species within tropical areas has been shown to be positively correlated to the amount of rainfall and the amount of rain forest area.[114] Accounting for 25% to 40% of the fruit-eating animals (by weight) within tropical rainforests, primates play an important ecological role by dispersing seeds of many tree species.[115]



Some species are partially terrestrial, such as baboons and patas monkeys, and a few species are fully terrestrial, such as geladas and humans. Non-human primates live in a diverse number of forested habitats in the tropical latitudes of ****Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and South America****, including rainforests, mangrove forests, and montane forests. There are some examples of non-human primates that live outside of the tropics; the mountain-dwelling Japanese macaque lives in the north of Honshū where there is snow-cover eight months of the year; the Barbary macaque lives in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and Morocco. - wikipedia



Primate Evolution During the Eocene Epoch

During the Eocene epoch--from about 55 million to 35 million years ago--small, lemur-like primates haunted woodlands the world over, though the fossil evidence is frustratingly sparse. The most important of these creatures was Notharctus, which had a telling mix of simian traits: a flat face with forward-facing eyes, flexible hands that could grasp branches, a sinuous backbone, and (perhaps most important) a bigger brain, proportionate to its size, than can be seen in any previous vertebrate. Interestingly, Notharctus was the last primate ever to be indigenous to North America; it probably descended from ancestors that crossed the land bridge from Asia at the end of the Paleocene. Similar to Notharctus was the western European Darwinius, the subject of a big public relations blitz a few years back touting it as the earliest human ancestor; not many experts are convinced.



Another important Eocene primate was the Asian Eosimias ("dawn monkey"), which was considerably smaller than both Notharctus and Darwinius, only a few inches from head to tail and weighing one or two ounces, max. The nocturnal, tree-dwelling Eosimias--which was about the size of your average Mesozoic mammal--has been posited by some experts as proof that monkeys originated in Asia rather than Africa, though this is far from a widely accepted conclusion. The Eocene also witnessed the North American Smilodectes and the amusingly named Necrolemur from western Europe, early, pint-sized monkey ancestors that were distantly related to modern lemurs and tarsiers.

Answer 3

I liked obnob's answer but I think bipedalism evolved at least 7 million years ago based on recent fossil evidence. The old theory of human evolution was that around 3 million years ago, Savanna spread and grew and our ancestors became bipedal. This isn't really correct. They were bipedal before that but I agree with Obnob that we certainly developed it and we were ripe to take advantage of the open niches that were made available.

Answer 4

Hello @ Jwalker,



The first homo sapiens are from Mesopotamia.

Africa is home to a secondary settlement, with the valley of the Hindus.



Homo sapiens has always been homo sapiens and apes have always been apes.

Homo sapiens has changed in the human species, but it has not changed from one species to another.



Good day and good meditation!

peace ^ ^

;-)