A primate is any member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains all the species commonly related to the lemurs, monkeys, and apes, with the latter category including humans.

Primates are found all over the world.

Non-human primates occur mostly in Central and South America, Africa, and southern Asia.

A few species exist as far north in the Americas as southern Mexico, and as far north in Asia as northern Japan.

The Primates order is divided informally into three main groupings: prosimians, monkeys of the New World, and monkeys and apes of the Old World.

All primates have five fingers (pentadactyly), a generalized dental pattern, and a primitive (unspecialized) body plan.

Another distinguishing feature of primates is fingernails.

Opposing thumbs are also a characteristic primate feature, but are not limited to this order; opossums, for example, also have opposing thumbs..

For more information about the topic Primate, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Lar Gibbon — The Lar Gibbon (Hylobates lar), also known as the White-handed Gibbon, is a primate in the Hylobatidae or gibbon family. It is one of the more ...  > read more

Lemur — Lemurs are part of a class of primates known as prosimians, and make up the infraorder Lemuriformes. This type of primate was the evolutionary ...  > read more

Monkey — A monkey is any member of two of the three groupings of simian primates. These two groupings are the New World and Old World monkeys of which ...  > read more

Cottontop Tamarin — The Cottontop Tamarin (Saguinus oedipus), also known as the Pinche Tamarin, is a small New World monkey weighing less than 1lb (0.5 kg). It is an ...  > read more

Related Stories

Primates Trade Smell For Sight (January 20, 2004) — Conventional wisdom says that people deficient in one sense--such as vision or hearing--often acquire heightened acuity in another. These adjustments, of course, take place over the lifetime of an ...  > read more

Fossil Teeth Reveal Oldest Bushbabies, Lorises (April 2, 2003) — A small collection of teeth and jaw fragments sifted from the Egyptian desert has provided the earliest fossil evidence for one of the three major lines of ...  > read more

Seeing The Serpent: Ability To Spot Venomous Snakes May Have Played Major Role In Primate Evolution (July 20, 2006) — The ability to spot venomous snakes may have played a major role in the evolution of monkeys, apes and humans, according to a new hypothesis by Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology at UC ...  > read more

Lemurs' Evolutionary History May Shed Light On Our Own (February 27, 2008) — After swabbing the cheeks of more than 200 lemurs and related primates to collect their DNA, researchers now have a much clearer picture of their evolutionary family tree. Found in nature only on the ...  > read more

Primitive Primate Makes The Case For Asian Anthropoid Origins (October 15, 1999) — Forty million year old fossil teeth and jaw fragments from a new species of early primate found in Myanmar lend support to the idea that the ancestor of all monkeys and apes lived in Asia instead of ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Our Changing Climate