| Duke University
Lemur Center Division of Fossil Primates |
| F Szalay, Novitates 2363, 10 March 1969, p. 10. |
| This is another small probable microsyopid. Note that the anterior lower tooth, as in the microsyopid plesiolestes, and in plesiodapids, carpolestids and paramomyids, is greatly enlarged, presumably in order to break into or husk fruits and seeds. These enlarged front teeth are not ever-growing, as in rodents. Rodents appear in the fossil record in the late Paleocene and early Eocene, when microsyopids, paramomyids, plesiadapids, and carpolestids, are in their heyday. Some students believe that as the rodents expanded in diversity and became adapted to feeding on nuts, fruits, and seeds in shrubs and trees, they outcompeted these various early groups of Proprimates, and allied forms, all of whom become extinct by the end of the Eocene. |