Sailing Monkeys

Have you ever wondered how it is that there are monkey's in south america, africa, and madagascar, and yet primates first evolved 55 my (the prevailing theory of primates first occurrence). They're not found in India till the mid Miocene, they appear in Wyoming in the L. Eocene (~50my) and were last seen in NA in the Oligocene (~25-30ma). Primates don't appear in the South American (SA) fossile record till the oligocene, but the Tertiary of SA was pretty tropical and preservation has been poor there. North And South America were separated (by most account) from the Jurassic to the Pliocene when the Panama Isthmus reconnected the two after the Caribbean oceanic plateau pushed though door, but it's possible the two may have retained land bridges in places will into the cretaceous. Africa and SA definitively split up 100my, though it is possible some hotspot volcanic island chains like the Walvis ridge may have yielded some intermittent land bridges. Madagascar separated from Africa at least 145 my but it's possible that it took a while for it slip past Somalia on a north south transform, so perhaps it took another 20 million hears but that 70 my before they evolved. According to the most recent one of only a few papers to address this quandary, Monkey's must have rafted over on debris across the atlantic. They freely admit that there are issues with the theory and it may not seem palatable but it's their favorite theory among the solutions they could think of or cite. Yes indeed plenty animals raft and swim some rather great distances such as the Galapagos with their land tortoises. Usually animals that make it out to far flung islands were either good swimmers or flyers, or they rode the plate like a boat ferrying goods across a global pond. There are several islands offshore West africa that are populated with primates, but to my knowledge, they were connected in the pliocene and .... to be continuedShow all