Postcranium of Adapis parisiensis and Leptadapis magnus (Adapiformes, Primates)

Abstract

The late Eocene European adapid Adapis parisiensis shares many postcranial features with the extant Lorisinae, suggesting that it was a nonleaping, slow-moving arboreal quadruped. The slightly older Leptadapis magnus was a larger, more robustly built strepsirhine, similar in some ways to Varecia insignis. Both taxa are quite different postcranially from the American Eocene adapids Pelycodus, Notharctus, and Smilodectes, and from an earlier European adapid from Messel. A phylogenetic analysis of these post-cranial features argues against an ancestral relationship between these two adapine species and anthropoids or these two adapines and Lemuriformes. The similarities between Adapis and lorisines and Leptadapis and Varecia are considered to be convergences.