ABSTRACT
No region has provided more information on higher primate evolution than deposits south of Cairo, Egypt, known as the Fayum. Fayum deposits have been excavated since the 1960s and have yielded prosimians, early anthropoids, and primitive catarrhines. Elwyn Simons and his colleagues have identified nearly twenty-five primate species from the Fayum site that could belong to six or more families (Simons, 1962, 1965a, 1965b, 1967a, 1967b, 1968a, 1968b, 1984). The oldest dates are from Locality 41, from the late Eocene, about 37 to 36 mya (Kappelman, 1992). Simons (1993) argues that the diversity of primates seen at Locality 41 suggests 5 to 10 million years of evolution since they diverged from a common ancestor. Thus, African higher primates may be as old as 46 million years.
