Carpolestidae is a family of primate-like

Plesiadapiformes Plesiadapiformes (" Adapid-like" or "near Adapiformes") is a group of Primates, a sister of the Dermoptera. While none of the groups normally directly assigned to this group survived, the group appears actually not to be literally extinct (in t ...

that were prevalent in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

and

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

from the mid

Paleocene The Paleocene, ( ) or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 mya (unit), million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), E ...

through the early

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period (geology), Period in the modern Cenozoic Era (geology), Era. The name ''Eocene' ...

. Typically, they are characterized by two large upper posterior

premolar The premolars, also called premolar teeth, or bicuspids, are transitional teeth located between the canine and molar teeth. In humans, there are two premolars per quadrant in the permanent set of teeth, making eight premolars total in the mouth ...

s and one large lower posterior premolar. They weighed about 20-150g, and were about the size of a

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

. Though they come from the order, Plesiadapiformes, that may have given rise to the primate order, carpolestids are too specialized and derived to be ancestors of primates. Historically, the almost twenty species included within the family were thought to have given rise to each other over time in a linear and straightforward manner. Still today it is widely assumed that '' Elphidotarsius'' from the mid to late

gave rise to ''

Carpodaptes ''Carpodaptes'' ("fruit eater" from Ancient Greek κᾰρπός arpós “fruit, grain” + δᾰ́πτης áptēs "eater, consumer") was a genus that encompassed small, insectivorous animals that roamed the Earth during the Late Paleocene. Sp ...

'' which lived in the late Paleocene and subsequently gave rise to ''

Carpolestes ''Carpolestes'' ("fruit thief" from Ancient Greek κᾰρπός (karpós), “fruit, grain” + λῃστής (lēistḗs), “thief”) is a genus of extinct primate-like mammals from the late Paleocene of North America. It first existed arou ...

'' from the early Eocene. As a result, they have been used as

biostratigraphic Biostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy which focuses on correlating and assigning relative ages of rock strata by using the fossil assemblages contained within them.Hine, Robert. “Biostratigraphy.” ''Oxford Reference: Dictionary of Bio ...

indicators in a variety of

paleontological Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (geology), epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes t ...

digs. However, the

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

picture has been complicated by the discovery in Asia of both ancestral and derived carpolestids in the same stratigraphic layer.

References

Fleagle, J. G. 2013
Primate Adaptation and Evolution
San Diego, Academic Press.

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3775994 Plesiadapiformes Paleocene first appearances Prehistoric mammal families