I was just wondering what is thought to have preceded the primate (or Hominoidea superfamily of primates )
stage of human ancestry.

I've always thought that it would have been some sort of dog, or perhaps squirrel, but could it have just have easily been some sort of elephant or hippo, for example?

Lemur?
Haven't you seen Madagascar?

That's actually a pretty good question. I think of the proto-lemur as being ratlike, but I have no evidence for that. It's just how I think of really old mammals.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_e...on#Before_Homo takes you back 85 million years. My guess is that before that our ancestral critters would have been hard to distinguish from rodents.

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For those inclined to oppose human meddling with the structure of the universe or the composition and configuration of objects and groups of objects within the universe, consider:
Whether there is a limit to the magnitude of a modulation of chaos below which order remains invariant? Or, is order but a fiction invented by perspectives applied over finite, however large, time intervals?

From M. Benton Vertebrate Paleontology 1990 text and attached pics from pages 305 to 309.

Attached Images

	BENTONPG309 VERT PALEO SMALL CHART.jpg (84.6 KB, 13 views)
	BENTONPG309 VERT PALEO SMALL CHART CLADS.jpg (102.5 KB, 19 views)

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily avaiable to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

I know you are a person who takes his physics seriously, but isn't it said that most great discoveries aren't discovered with "Eureka!" but with, "Hmmm, that's funny." Big Don

Adam and Eve...DUH!

I'm sorry, please explain, is this humor or a theological statement?

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily avaiable to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

I know you are a person who takes his physics seriously, but isn't it said that most great discoveries aren't discovered with "Eureka!" but with, "Hmmm, that's funny." Big Don

Adam and Eve were the first humans in Middle-Eastern mythology, so I suppose it could be a humorous or a theological statement, but I'm guessing it was humourous.

The trouble is, some may take it as a humourius statement, and find it offensive, some may take it as a claim, and find it offensive. Religious type statemnts in an ambigues enviroment like text are a quagmire. Despite the fact it restricts some of the topics I would like to discuss, I understand the need for the rules in place.
Please Toothdust, avoid such comments in future, they only cause headachs.

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Stephen Baxter's book, "Evolution" offers some interesting speculation / research in this regard. It started out following the life of a rodent like primate who managed to survive a mass extinction event.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Hmm, the ancestor of humans was a rat. That would explain many things.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Yeah, the ability to work a maze, stand on the back two feet, and the love of all kinds of cheese.

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(By the way, I hate it that so many papers in the areas of planetary science and geology are not easily avaiable to the dreaded "non-subscribers". It is like they are screaming at me: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". Good, I feel better now.)

I know you are a person who takes his physics seriously, but isn't it said that most great discoveries aren't discovered with "Eureka!" but with, "Hmmm, that's funny." Big Don

Too many!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...e-from-a-fish/


http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/...bs&Qis=XL#qdig

My guess is that before that our ancestral critters would have been hard to distinguish from rodents.

Ditto...go back far enough, and one would probably be hard-pressed to tell the difference between an ancestral carnivore, primate, or rodent.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State