Earliest Palaeocene purgatoriids and the initial radiation of stem primates

Gregory P Wilson Mantilla; Stephen G B Chester; William A Clemens; Jason R Moore; Courtney J Sprain; Brody T Hovatter; William S Mitchell; Wade W Mans; Roland Mundil; Paul R Renne

doi:10.1098/rsos.210050

Earliest Palaeocene purgatoriids and the initial radiation of stem primates

R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Feb 24;8(2):210050. doi: 10.1098/rsos.210050.

Authors

Gregory P Wilson Mantilla^{1

2}, Stephen G B Chester^{3

4

5}, William A Clemens^{6

7}, Jason R Moore⁸, Courtney J Sprain⁹, Brody T Hovatter¹⁰, William S Mitchell¹¹, Wade W Mans¹², Roland Mundil¹³, Paul R Renne^{14

13}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
² Department of Paleontology, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
³ Department of Anthropology, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA.
⁴ Department of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA.
⁵ New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology, New York, NY, USA.
⁶ Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁷ Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁸ Honors College, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
⁹ Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
¹¹ Minnesota IT Services, St Paul, MN 55155, USA.
¹² Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
¹³ Berkeley Geochronology Center, 2455 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

Abstract

Plesiadapiform mammals, as stem primates, are key to understanding the evolutionary and ecological origins of Pan-Primates and Euarchonta. The Purgatoriidae, as the geologically oldest and most primitive known plesiadapiforms and one of the oldest known placental groups, are also central to the evolutionary radiation of placentals and the Cretaceous-Palaeogene biotic recovery on land. Here, we report new dental fossils of Purgatorius from early Palaeocene (early Puercan) age deposits in northeastern Montana that represent the earliest dated occurrences of plesiadapiforms. We constrain the age of these earliest purgatoriids to magnetochron C29R and most likely to within 105-139 thousand years post-K/Pg boundary. Given the occurrence of at least two species, Purgatorius janisae and a new species, at the locality, we provide the strongest support to date that purgatoriids and, by extension, Pan-Primates, Euarchonta and Placentalia probably originated by the Late Cretaceous. Within 1 million years of their arrival in northeastern Montana, plesiadapiforms outstripped archaic ungulates in numerical abundance and dominated the arboreal omnivore-frugivore niche in mammalian local faunas.

Keywords: Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary; Purgatoriidae; frugivory; plesiadapiforms; primates.

Associated data

figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.5309821