UBtheNEWS: Lemurs to Human research page

Summary

The Urantia Book, which was published in 1955, provides a history of mammalian evolution. Lemurs are said to play an important role in the progressive evolutionary development of the human species. This research page catalogues discoveries and related research that supports The Urantia Book’s statements about the role of lemurs in the evolution of human beings.

Urantia Book passages about Lemur to Human Evolution:

(61:1.2)  Early in this period [The Age Of Early Mammals; 50,000,000 years ago] and in North America the placental type of mammals suddenly appeared, and they constituted the most important evolutionary development up to this time. Previous orders of nonplacental mammals had existed, but this new type sprang directly and suddenly from the pre-existent reptilian ancestor whose descendants had persisted on down through the times of dinosaur decline. The father of the placental mammals was a small, highly active, carnivorous, springing type of dinosaur.

(61:1.9)  45,000,000 years ago … [m]ammalian life was evolving rapidly. A small reptilian, egg-laying type of mammal flourished, and the ancestors of the later kangaroos roamed Australia. Soon there were small horses, fleet-footed rhinoceroses, tapirs with proboscises, primitive pigs, squirrels, lemurs, opossums, and several tribes of monkeylike animals. They were all small, primitive, and best suited to living among the forests of the mountain regions.

(61:2.3)  35,000,000 years ago marks the beginning of the age of placental-mammalian world domination. The southern land bridge was extensive, reconnecting the then enormous Antarctic continent with South America, South Africa, and Australia. In spite of the massing of land in high latitudes, the world climate remained relatively mild because of the enormous increase in the size of the tropic seas, nor was the land elevated sufficiently to produce glaciers. Extensive lava flows occurred in Greenland and Iceland, some coal being deposited between these layers.

(61:2.10)  About this time [30,000,000 years ago] a notable thing occurred in western North America: The early ancestors of the ancient lemurs first made their appearance. While this family cannot be regarded as true lemurs, their coming marked the establishment of the line from which the true lemurs subsequently sprang.

THE DAWN RACES OF EARLY MAN

(62:0.1)  ABOUT ONE MILLION years ago the immediate ancestors of mankind made their appearance by three successive and sudden mutations stemming from early stock of the lemur type of placental mammal. The dominant factors of these early lemurs were derived from the western or later American group of the evolving life plasm. But before establishing the direct line of human ancestry, this strain was reinforced by contributions from the central life implantation evolved in Africa. The eastern life group contributed little or nothing to the actual production of the human species.

1. THE EARLY LEMUR TYPES

(62:1.1)  The early lemurs concerned in the ancestry of the human species were not directly related to the pre-existent tribes of gibbons and apes then living in Eurasia and northern Africa, whose progeny have survived to the present time. Neither were they the offspring of the modern type of lemur, though springing from an ancestor common to both but long since extinct.

(62:1.2)  While these early lemurs evolved in the Western Hemisphere, the establishment of the direct mammalian ancestry of mankind took place in southwestern Asia, in the original area of the central life implantation but on the borders of the eastern regions. Several million years ago the North American type lemurs had migrated westward over the Bering land bridge and had slowly made their way southwestward along the Asiatic coast. These migrating tribes finally reached the salubrious region lying between the then expanded Mediterranean Sea and the elevating mountainous regions of the Indian peninsula. In these lands to the west of India they united with other and favorable strains, thus establishing the ancestry of the human race.

(62:1.3)  With the passing of time the seacoast of India southwest of the mountains gradually submerged, completely isolating the life of this region. There was no avenue of approach to, or escape from, this Mesopotamian or Persian peninsula except to the north, and that was repeatedly cut off by the southern invasions of the glaciers. And it was in this then almost paradisiacal area, and from the superior descendants of this lemur type of mammal, that there sprang two great groups, the simian tribes of modern times and the present-day human species.

2. THE DAWN MAMMALS

(62:2.1)  A little more than one million years ago the Mesopotamian dawn mammals, the direct descendants of the North American lemur type of placental mammal, suddenly appeared. They were active little creatures, almost three feet tall; and while they did not habitually walk on their hind legs, they could easily stand erect. They were hairy and agile and chattered in monkeylike fashion, but unlike the simian tribes, they were flesh eaters. They had a primitive opposable thumb as well as a highly useful grasping big toe. From this point onward the prehuman species successively developed the opposable thumb while they progressively lost the grasping power of the great toe. The later ape tribes retained the grasping big toe but never developed the human type of thumb.

(62:2.2)  These dawn mammals attained full growth when three or four years of age, having a potential life span, on the average, of about twenty years. As a rule offspring were born singly, although twins were occasional.

(62:2.3)  The members of this new species had the largest brains for their size of any animal that had theretofore existed on earth. They experienced many of the emotions and shared numerous instincts which later characterized primitive man, being highly curious and exhibiting considerable elation when successful at any undertaking.

(62:2.6)  These aggressive little animals multiplied and spread over the Mesopotamian peninsula for more than one thousand years, constantly improving in physical type and general intelligence. And it was just seventy generations after this new tribe had taken origin from the highest type of lemur ancestor that the next epoch-making development occurred—the sudden differentiation of the ancestors of the next vital step in the evolution of human beings on Urantia.

3. THE MID-MAMMALS

(62:3.1)  Early in the career of the dawn mammals, in the treetop abode of a superior pair of these agile creatures, twins were born, one male and one female. Compared with their ancestors, they were really handsome little creatures. They had little hair on their bodies, but this was no disability as they lived in a warm and equable climate.

(62:3.2)  These children grew to be a little over four feet in height. They were in every way larger than their parents, having longer legs and shorter arms. They had almost perfectly opposable thumbs, just about as well adapted for diversified work as the present human thumb. They walked upright, having feet almost as well suited for walking as those of the later human races.

(62:3.3)  Their brains were inferior to, and smaller than, those of human beings but very superior to, and comparatively much larger than, those of their ancestors. The twins early displayed superior intelligence and were soon recognized as the heads of the whole tribe of dawn mammals, really instituting a primitive form of social organization and a crude economic division of labor. This brother and sister mated and soon enjoyed the society of twenty-one children much like themselves, all more than four feet tall and in every way superior to the ancestral species. This new group formed the nucleus of the mid-mammals.

(62:3.8)  As time passed, the natural increase in numbers eventually resulted in serious food competition and sex rivalry, all of which culminated in a series of internecine battles that nearly destroyed the entire species. These struggles continued until only one group of less than one hundred individuals was left alive. But peace once more prevailed, and this lone surviving tribe built anew its treetop bedrooms and once again resumed a normal and semipeaceful existence.

(62:3.9)  You can hardly realize by what narrow margins your prehuman ancestors missed extinction from time to time. Had the ancestral frog of all humanity jumped two inches less on a certain occasion, the whole course of evolution would have been markedly changed. The immediate lemurlike mother of the dawn-mammal species escaped death no less than five times by mere hairbreadth margins before she gave birth to the father of the new and higher mammalian order. But the closest call of all was when lightning struck the tree in which the prospective mother of the Primates twins was sleeping. Both of these mid-mammal parents were severely shocked and badly burned; three of their seven children were killed by this bolt from the skies. These evolving animals were almost superstitious. This couple whose treetop home had been struck were really the leaders of the more progressive group of the mid-mammal species; and following their example, more than half the tribe, embracing the more intelligent families, moved about two miles away from this locality and began the construction of new treetop abodes and new ground shelters—their transient retreats in time of sudden danger.

(62:3.10)  Soon after the completion of their home, this couple, veterans of so many struggles, found themselves the proud parents of twins, the most interesting and important animals ever to have been born into the world up to that time, for they were the first of the new species of Primates constituting the next vital step in prehuman evolution.

(62:3.11)  Contemporaneously with the birth of these Primates twins, another couple—a peculiarly retarded male and female of the mid-mammal tribe, a couple that were both mentally and physically inferior—also gave birth to twins. These twins, one male and one female, were indifferent to conquest; they were concerned only with obtaining food and, since they would not eat flesh, soon lost all interest in seeking prey. These retarded twins became the founders of the modern simian tribes. Their descendants sought the warmer southern regions with their mild climates and an abundance of tropical fruits, where they have continued much as of that day except for those branches which mated with the earlier types of gibbons and apes and have greatly deteriorated in consequence.

(62:3.12)  And so it may be readily seen that man and the ape are related only in that they sprang from the mid-mammals, a tribe in which there occurred the contemporaneous birth and subsequent segregation of two pairs of twins: the inferior pair destined to produce the modern types of monkey, baboon, chimpanzee, and gorilla; the superior pair destined to continue the line of ascent which evolved into man himself.

(62:3.13)  Modern man and the simians did spring from the same tribe and species but not from the same parents. Man’s ancestors are descended from the superior strains of the selected remnant of this mid-mammal tribe, whereas the modern simians (excepting certain pre-existent types of lemurs, gibbons, apes, and other monkeylike creatures) are the descendants of the most inferior couple of this mid-mammal group, a couple who only survived by hiding themselves in a subterranean food-storage retreat for more than two weeks during the last fierce battle of their tribe, emerging only after the hostilities were well over.

4. THE PRIMATES

(62:4.1)  Going back to the birth of the superior twins, one male and one female, to the two leading members of the mid-mammal tribe: These animal babies were of an unusual order; they had still less hair on their bodies than their parents and, when very young, insisted on walking upright. Their ancestors had always learned to walk on their hind legs, but these Primates twins stood erect from the beginning. They attained a height of over five feet, and their heads grew larger in comparison with others among the tribe. While early learning to communicate with each other by means of signs and sounds, they were never able to make their people understand these new symbols.

(62:4.2)  When about fourteen years of age, they fled from the tribe, going west to raise their family and establish the new species of Primates. And these new creatures are very properly denominated Primates since they were the direct and immediate animal ancestors of the human family itself.

(62:4.3)  Thus it was that the Primates came to occupy a region on the west coast of the Mesopotamian peninsula as it then projected into the southern sea, while the less intelligent and closely related tribes lived around the peninsula point and up the eastern shore line.

(62:4.4)  The Primates were more human and less animal than their mid-mammal predecessors. The skeletal proportions of this new species were very similar to those of the primitive human races. The human type of hand and foot had fully developed, and these creatures could walk and even run as well as any of their later-day human descendants. They largely abandoned tree life, though continuing to resort to the treetops as a safety measure at night, for like their earlier ancestors, they were greatly subject to fear. The increased use of their hands did much to develop inherent brain power, but they did not yet possess minds that could really be called human.

(62:4.5)  Although in emotional nature the Primates differed little from their forebears, they exhibited more of a human trend in all of their propensities. They were, indeed, splendid and superior animals, reaching maturity at about ten years of age and having a natural life span of about forty years. That is, they might have lived that long had they died natural deaths, but in those early days very few animals ever died a natural death; the struggle for existence was altogether too intense.

(62:4.6)  And now, after almost nine hundred generations of development, covering about twenty-one thousand years from the origin of the dawn mammals, the Primates suddenly gave birth to two remarkable creatures, the first true human beings.

(62:4.7)  Thus it was that the dawn mammals, springing from the North American lemur type, gave origin to the mid-mammals, and these mid-mammals in turn produced the superior Primates, who became the immediate ancestors of the primitive human race. The Primates tribes were the last vital link in the evolution of man, but in less than five thousand years not a single individual of these extraordinary tribes was left.

The Urantia Book also summarizes the above extended recounting of this period of evolutionary history as follows:

(62:6.1)  The great event of this glacial period was the evolution of primitive man. Slightly to the west of India, on land now under water and among the offspring of Asiatic migrants of the older North American lemur types, the dawn mammals suddenly appeared. These small animals walked mostly on their hind legs, and they possessed large brains in proportion to their size and in comparison with the brains of other animals. In the seventieth generation of this order of life a new and higher group of animals suddenly differentiated. These new mid-mammals—almost twice the size and height of their ancestors and possessing proportionately increased brain power—had only well established themselves when the Primates, the third vital mutation, suddenly appeared. (At this same time, a retrograde development within the mid-mammal stock gave origin to the simian ancestry; and from that day to this the human branch has gone forward by progressive evolution, while the simian tribes have remained stationary or have actually retrogressed.)

(62:6.2)  1,000,000 years ago Urantia was registered as an inhabited world. A mutation within the stock of the progressing Primates suddenly produced two primitive human beings, the actual ancestors of mankind.

(65:2.13)  Man thus evolved from the higher mammals derived principally from the western implantation of life in the ancient east-west sheltered seas. The eastern and central groups of living organisms were early progressing favorably toward the attainment of prehuman levels of animal existence. But as the ages passed, the eastern focus of life emplacement failed to attain a satisfactory level of intelligent prehuman status, having suffered such repeated and irretrievable losses of its highest types of germ plasm that it was forever shorn of the power to rehabilitate human potentialities.

(65:2.14)  Since the quality of the mind capacity for development in this eastern group was so definitely inferior to that of the other two groups, the Life Carriers, with the consent of their superiors, so manipulated the environment as further to circumscribe these inferior prehuman strains of evolving life. To all outward appearances the elimination of these inferior groups of creatures was accidental, but in reality it was altogether purposeful.

(65:2.15)  Later in the evolutionary unfolding of intelligence, the lemur ancestors of the human species were far more advanced in North America than in other regions; and they were therefore led to migrate from the arena of western life implantation over the Bering land bridge and down the coast to southwestern Asia, where they continued to evolve and to benefit by the addition of certain strains of the central life group. Man thus evolved out of certain western and central life strains but in the central to near-eastern regions.

(65:2.16)  In this way the life that was planted on Urantia evolved until the ice age, when man himself first appeared and began his eventful planetary career. And this appearance of primitive man on earth during the ice age was not just an accident; it was by design. The rigors and climatic severity of the glacial era were in every way adapted to the purpose of fostering the production of a hardy type of human being with tremendous survival endowment.

Anthropological Discoveries

Early North American lemurs cross Bering Straight land bridge

Scientists have discovered what they believe is the oldest known lemur fossils in the Bugti Hills of central Pakistan. The finding is controversial because the new evidence suggests that lemurs originated in Asia, not in Africa as commonly believed.

The fossil remains consist of a collection of tiny teeth that resemble the teeth of Madagascar’s modern dwarf lemur, Cheirogaleus. The 30-million-year-old fossils predate all lemur fossils found in Africa. Lead scientist Laurent Mariveux, of Universite Montpellier, in France, said the find was “totally unexpected.”

The team dubbed the new lemur Bugtilemur mathisoni. The findings are published in the October 19 issue of the journal Science.
Today lemurs live primarily in Madagascar and some nearby islands—it is thought that they may have migrated to the islands on floating vegetation. The question now is where did the migration begin?

Geological evidence shows that Madagascar separated from India about 88 million years ago, long before the origin of lemurs about 62 million years ago, making Asia an unlikely point of origin.
Mariveux admits the solution to this enigma is still in the future. But he says, “the time has come for the Asian scenario to receive more serious attention.”

But some scientists have more fundamental disputes with Mariveux’s work. They question whether these teeth really belong to a lemur.
The trademark feature of a lemur—a tooth “comb”, which juts out on the lower jaw—was not among the fossils discovered by the team.

“There isn’t enough evidence to determine whether this is, or is not a lemur,” says William Hylander, director of the Duke University Primate Center in Durham, North Carolina.
A more likely explanation, says paleontologist Richard Kay, also of Duke University, is that the fossil teeth belong to a family of Eurasian primates— sivaladapis—that are now extinct. The sivaladapis family of primates which lived in India about 13 million years ago have similar teeth to lorises, a close relative of the lemur, but the two are unrelated.

Mariveux’s new finding departs radically from mainstream opinion, which doesn’t mean that it is wrong, says Kay, it just needs more support.
Suggesting that the fossilized teeth belong to a lemur is “an extraordinary claim,” says Kay. “It demands extraordinary evidence.”

 

Scientific America, October 19, 2001 (excerpt)
by Kate Wong

Fossils Suggest Lemurs May Have Asian, Not African, Roots

Madagascar houses many unique plants and animals, the most famous of which are almost certainly its lemurs. Although researchers have long studied this group of primitive primates, their evolutionary past has remained largely mysterious, owing to the absence of known fossil representatives. It seemed likely that lemurs originated in continental Africa and later migrated eastward to the island nation. But new data suggests that the charismatic creatures could have Asian, not African, roots. According to a report published today in the journal Science, researchers have unearthed the oldest lemur remains knowntiny teeth some 30 million years oldin Pakistan.

French paleontologist Laurent Marivaux of the Universit Montpellier II and colleagues have assigned the fossil teeth to a new genus and species, Bugtilemur mathesoni. Discovered in the Bugti Hills of Balochistan, Pakistan, Bugtilemur exhibits a specialized dental pattern similar to that of the modern dwarf lemur, Cheirogaleus. This, the researchers report, suggests one of two things. Either the common ancestors of Bugtilemur and Cheirogaleus inhabited the Indo-Malagasy land mass prior to its breakup some 88 million years ago, or a migration of lemurs took place between Madagascar and Greater India after they split. The authors favor the latter, but remain unsure of the direction of the dispersal. If lemurs originated in Africa, they may have colonized Madagascar and later made their way northward to Asia. Alternatively, they may have arisen in Asia and later migrated to Madagascar, perhaps drifting over on rafts of vegetation. Fossilized remains of trees, pollen and fruit from the site suggest that Bugtilemur inhabited a lush environment similar to today’s tropical forests.

Their analysis confirmed that the first to branch off from the rest of the lemurs, some 66 million years ago, was the aye-aye–a nocturnal primate that taps on trees with its fingers to listen for insects inside, making it Madagascar’s version of a woodpecker. They also resolved the relationships among species within the remaining four evolutionary lineages, which includes a diverse cast of characters: the sifakas, named for the hissing “shee-fak” sound they make; the sportive lemurs, which are strictly nocturnal; the mouse lemurs, the smallest of all living primates; and the many so-called “true lemurs,” including the blue-eyed black lemur (one of only three blue-eyed primates in the world) and the ringtailed lemur, which is often found in zoos.

“By throwing this much data at the problem, we have absolutely confirmed, beyond any statistical doubt, that the spectacular array of lemurs all descended from a single ancestral species,” said Yoder, noting that lemurs account for about 20 percent of primate species and live on less than one percent of the earth’s surface. “It further highlights the importance of Madagascar as a cradle for biodiversity.”

The study lays the groundwork for doing future studies of lemurs and other primates. The methods the group developed for this study can also be applied to understanding evolutionary relationships among other animal groups for which genomic sequences are hard to come by.

Collaborators on the study included Stephanie Embry, Isabella Fiorentino, Gregory Wray and Huntington Willard, all of Duke; Peter Kappeler, of the German Primate Centre; and James Balhoff, of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.

Karger.com, 2009 (Abstract)
by Apiou F. · Rumpler Y. · Warter S. · Vezuli A. · Dutrillaux B.

Animal Cytogenetics and Comparative Mapping
Demonstration of homoeologies between human and lemur chromosomes by chromosome painting

Human-specific probes for chromosomes 3, 7, 9, 14, 19, and 21 were used to paint chromosomes of three lemur species: Eulemur fulvus mayottensis, E. macaco macaco, and Lemur catta. Chromosomes 1 and 3 of E. f. mayottensis are homoeologous to human chromosomes 3,9, 14, and 21 as previously suggested by chromosome banding. Probes for human chromosomes 7 and 19 produced unexpectedly strong signals in the centromeric regions of all lemur chromosomes, suggesting that sequences homologous to nonrepeated sequences of the human genome have been amplified during the formation of constitutive heterochromatin in lemurs.

Lemur Logic May Provide Clues to Primate Intellect Evolution

We already know that monkeys and apes have remarkable levels of intelligence. Chimps and gorillas have been taught to use complex sign languages, Rhesus macaques demonstrate knowledge of basic math, and baboons are known to commonly deceive one another to their own ends.

But lemurs— monkeys’ primate cousins—were thought to possess few of these abilities. Scientists had all but written them off as a cognitive dead end in the primate family tree.

Now, Aristides, an 11-year-old ring-tailed lemur with fluffy gray fur and enquiring brown eyes, may be about to turn that idea on its head.

With the help of his trainer, psychologist Elizabeth Brannon, Aristides selects sequences of images by pressing his nose against a computer screen. In return for fruit-flavored sugar pellets, Aristides and his eager classmates at the Duke University Primate Center are providing Brannon’s team with compelling clues about how our earliest primate ancestors developed mental capabilities that we all share today.

Ancestral Brainpower

Fossils suggest that lemurs, bush babies, lorises, aye-ayes, and their relatives (the prosimians) spilt off from the ancestors of monkeys and apes around 55 million years ago. Therefore studying the brainpower of these seemingly primitive animals might offer insights into the earliest primates’ mental abilities.

“Anthropologists are interested in discovering how human intelligence evolved and how we differ to other species,” said Brannon of the Durham, North Carolina- based university. “By pinpointing which cognitive abilities all primates share, including prosimian primates, we hope to determine what aspects of intelligence are general primate adaptations.”

Much of Brannon’s research has focused on understanding how humans became so sophisticated numerically. Her studies of human infants, monkeys, and now lemurs are helping to piece together a picture of whether primates possess a special predisposition to math.

Despite the huge quantity of literature on all aspects of intelligence in chimpanzees, rhesus macaques, and a handful of other primates, there has been very little work on lemurs. Brannon’s work may now go someway to filling that frustrating data hole.

However, she started the pilot project with low expectations. Lemurs—which are found exclusively on the African island of Madagascar—are much less curious than the average monkey. The handful of existing cognitive studies suggested that the animals had little capacity to learn or complete simple tasks.

List Learning

Nevertheless, Brannon’’s project has already yielded some encouraging results.

In one trial the Duke University team is testing the star pupil Aristides’ ability to remember longer and longer lists of photographic images displayed on the computer monitor. His classmates—another ring-tailed lemur called Teres and two mongoose lemurs (distinguished by their white snouts and red-brown beards), Miguel and Guillermo—are also eager to complete the same tasks for banana- or tropical fruit-flavored rewards.

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