Primate ancestor of all humans likely roamed with the dinosaurs
By Patrick Pester - Staff Writer 3 hours ago
Our ancient ancestors looked like squirrels.
A reconstruction of the newly described primate species, Purgatorius mckeeveri, which is thought to be one of the earliest known primates. (Image credit: Andrey Atuchin)
Scientists have identified the earliest primate fossils: tiny ancient teeth from a rat-size creature that suggest our ancient ancestors once lived alongside the dinosaurs.
The teeth are 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) long and are from the oldest group of primates, known as plesiadapiforms. They were found in the Fort Union Formation in northeastern Montana in the 1980s, but have now been formally identified in a new study, published Feb. 24 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
These early primates represent life beginning to recover after the giant asteroid slammed into Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period about 66 million years ago, causing a mass extinction that wiped out nonavian dinosaurs. The researchers dated the fossils to between 105,000 and 139,000 years after the extinction event; but these creatures likely evolved from an unknown ancestor primate that lived alongside the dinosaurs, the researchers said.
"It's our lineage, so it has a special meaning to us. And to think about, you know, our earliest ancestors at this time in northeastern Montana living alongside dinosaurs perhaps and then surviving this [extinction] event is pretty breathtaking to me," co-lead author Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the university's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, told Live Science.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
same thing when I did a search for "primate". So give it a rest and have a good day! 
