Adapis

Adapis is the type genus of the Adapidae, an extinct family of primates from the Palaeogene within the extinct infraorder Adapiformes. It was endemic to western Europe and lived from the Middle to Late Eocene. Adapis was first named in 1822 by the French palaeontologist Georges Cuvier, who studied incomplete jaws from Montmartre and thought it to have been a "pachyderm" similar to the artiodactyl Anoplotherium. Adapis parisiensis was recognized by Cuvier in 1824; several other species of Adapis were named in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1870s, Adapis was recognized formally as a primate rather than a "pachyderm", with later researchers noting that Adapis was therefore the first fossil primate to have ever been taxonomically described. Palaeolemur and Leptadapis of the subfamily Adapinae, an endemic European primate subfamily, were previously reclassified as synonyms or subgenera of Adapis but were eventually recognized again as distinct genera from Adapis. As a result, there are six total species of Adapis, with A. parisiensis being the type species.

Adapis

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikidata/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AdapinaePBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB, for Adapidae
Life habit
arborealPBDB, for Adapidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Adapidae

Time the record covers

At most 7.2 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 41.03 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Eocene — about 23 of 23 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 23 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences41–41 Mya — about 1 occurrence41–40 Mya — about 1 occurrence40–40 Mya — about 1 occurrence40–40 Mya — about 1 occurrence40–40 Mya — about 1 occurrence40–39 Mya — about 1 occurrence39–39 Mya — about 1 occurrence39–39 Mya — about 1 occurrence39–39 Mya — about 1 occurrence39–38 Mya — about 1 occurrence38–38 Mya — about 1 occurrence38–38 Mya — about 1 occurrence38–37 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences37–37 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences37–36 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences36–36 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences36–35 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences35–35 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences35–34 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences34–34 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences41.5 Mya33.4 Mya

23 occurrences of Adapis on record, most of them in the Eocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

23 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

6 formations

Collegats — 42.25°N, 1.08°ECreechbarrow Limestone — 50.65°N, 2.12°WBellmunt — 42.17°N, 2.01°ECalcaire de Saint-Ouen — 49.13°N, 3.35°EUpper Headon Beds — 50.63°N, 1.55°WMazaterón — 41.53°N, 2.12°W

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The named rock units Adapis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Adapis and its relatives

Eocene

Where Adapis and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.

Found in the same rock

332 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 12 sites for Adapis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

14 references

Each of the 23 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 2 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Adapis

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Adapis was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAdapinae through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Cuvier 1822