By the time humans arrived on the scene, dinosaurs had long since disappeared from the earth. Recent findings, however, suggest that the seed of creation of humans (and other primates) had already grown when the mighty dinosaurs were still walking on the planet. Fossils of the oldest known primate life form have been analyzed to discover that they were about 65.9 million years old. For reference, dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago. The fossils belong to the genus Purgatorius recognized by most biologists as a group plesiadapiforms– oldest known primate.
These little mammals were completely different from the successors we recognize today. Author Stephen Chester, who highlighted the importance of this discovery – the oldest occurrence of archaic primates – said: “It contributes to our understanding of how the earliest primates separated themselves from their competitors after the demise of the dinosaurs. “
Based on the teeth fossil analysis, the team estimates that these animals (which are the ancestors of all known primates, including apes, lemurs, and even humans) probably evolved through the Late Chalk– which means that they lived next to large dinosaurs. According to Peter Tolias, dean of the School of Natural and Behavioral Sciences, this discovery is an important step in increasing our understanding of the environmental, biological and social dependence that eventually led to the evolution of primates.
Recently, another article found that the cause of dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago was definitely an asteroid impact. This implies everything that the mighty dinos took out was survived by our ancestor and led to the eventual restoration of life on the planet.
Chester has been involved in many groundbreaking discoveries of the primates. He co-authored a paper in 2015 in which ankle bones of Purgatorius and settled these ancestors of the tree-like inhabitants, the asteroid impact survived long after dinosaurs were gone.
Before this new discovery, the oldest known primate fossil was 55 million years ago. It belonged to a maki-like mammal and was discovered in 2013 in China. The animal was named Archicebus achilles. (Long after all the dinosaurs were gone.) This study was published in Royal Society Open Science.