P rimates are a group of mammals that includes humans and our close relatives, such as apes, monkeys and lemurs. Monkeys, ...

For many of us, it may be hard to imagine that if we went back far enough in time—more than 55 million years, when the first primates are thought to have lived—that our great-a-million-times ...

Primates first appeared in the fossil record nearly 55 million years ago, and may have originated as far back as the Cretaceous Period. Since that time, this evolutionary lineage has produced ...

Sixty-five million years ago, as the last of the non-avian dinosaurs were going extinct, our earliest recognized ancestors appeared in the fossil record. When, where, and why did they evolve?

Modern tarsiers are tree-dwelling primates that live on Southeast Asian islands. The tarsier lineage split off from the anthropoids, the lineage that gave rise to monkeys, apes, and humans, just ...

Mixodectes belonged to an extinct family known as mixodectids and lived during the Paleocene epoch. This geological epoch followed the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that killed off non-avian ...

New discoveries shed light on an ancient human species and its evolutionary links to modern humans. Stephen Chester, ...

Jef Akst was managing editor of The Scientist, where she started as an intern in 2009 after receiving a master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses.

The ability to see the world in color is one most people take for granted. But our earliest primate ancestors lacked this ability. When and how did we gain the ability to see the world the way we do?

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Primates have larger brains than most other mammals of their size. This gives them advanced ...