Elaine Guevara gave a lecture on primate systematics. We learned that the 7 things that define primates are: the presence of opposable thumbs and feet, fully closed boney eye socket, nails, grasping hands, relatively large brains, well defined facial muscle, and a petrosal bulla. It is believed that primates closest relatives are the flying lemur, which actually isn’t a lemur, and the tree shrew. The emergence of primates is believed to have occurred ~80ma ago. Amongst the primates, lemurs are believed to be some of the most primitive to still exist, along with lorises. These two species compose the strepsirrhine group. There are 6 interesting traits that make a lemur a lemur: retention of basal mammalian traits (multiple nipples), lemur synapomorphies (tooth comb), seasonal breeding, female dominance, scent marking and incredible diversity. There are many different species of lemur including the most distantly related Aye-Aye, the bamboo lemur, Indri, etc. The biggest question about lemurs is how the got to the island of Madagascar. The top theory is that they floated over from mainland Africa on some type of raft-like structure.
