Question

In 1 to 2 paragraphs answer this: what do you think are the important aspects of the fossil primates?

Answer 1

A primate fossil is usually found along with other fossils, both plant and animal, and within a particular geological setting, all of which can yield useful information about the environment in which the animal lived and died. Whether a fossil primate is found associated with forest rodents or savannah rodents, for example, can provide clues to its habitat preferences. Land snails seem to have narrow habitat preferences, and fossil snails have proved very useful in determining the extent to which a particular fossil locality represents a forested or an open habitat. Similarly, fossil plants can yield information about both local habitat and climate.

The sediments containing fossils can provide many kinds of information about the fossils’ origin. They can tell us whether a fossil deposit was preserved on a floodplain, on a river delta, in a stream channel, or on the shores of a lake. This information about where an animal’s bones were preserved provides clues to where it lived or died. In addition, sediments can provide detailed information about the climatic regime during which they were formed. Was it hot, cold, wet, or dry? Was the weather relatively uniform, or was it seasonal? In addition to the information they convey about a particular fossil site, sedimentary deposits can tell us about climatic trends in a particular region. Many fossil primates are found in ancient soils, and these soils usually contain considerable information about the conditions under which they were formed.A very important tool for reconstructing past environments inhabited by primates comes from the study of stable isotopes in soils and in fossils. Most of the common elements on earth come in different forms, called isotopes, which have the same number of electrons and protons, and thus the same electrical properties. However, isotopes differ in their numbers of neutrons, and consequently, different isotopes have different weights. Isotopes of different weights can behave differently in various biochemical and geochemical processes.