Apes and Old World monkeys part ways
The catarrhine line divides into the branch that leads to macaques and baboons and the one that leads to us.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 5 million years
- Known to
- ± 3 million years
- Era
- Oligocene, Cenozoic
Toward the end of the Oligocene the catarrhine primates split into cercopithecoids — the Old World monkeys — and hominoids, the apes. The two take opposite paths: monkeys keep a generalised quadrupedal body and evolve specialised bilophodont teeth and, in many lineages, leaf-digesting stomachs, while apes lose the tail, broaden the chest and rebuild the shoulder for hanging beneath branches. Every subsequent question about human origins begins on the hominoid side of this split.