Monkey travel in evolution (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 19, 2015, 00:57 (3355 days ago)

The relationship between African and South American monkeys appears to be established, but how did the monkeys originate in Africa and get to South America. The current theory is they crossed the ocean, but how? They would starve on drifting raft travel.-http://phys.org/news/2015-02-fossils-heart-amazon-evidence-south.html-"For millions of years, South America was an island continent. Geographically isolated from Africa as a result of plate tectonics more than 65 million years ago, this continent witnessed the evolution of many unfamiliar groups of animals and plants. From time to time, animals more familiar to us today—monkeys and rodents among others—managed to arrive to this island landmass, their remains appearing abruptly in the fossil record. Yet, the earliest phases of the evolutionary history of monkeys in South America have remained cloaked in mystery. Long thought to have managed a long transatlantic journey from Africa, evidence for this hypothesis was difficult to support without fossil data. -"A new discovery from the heart of the Peruvian Amazon now unveils a key chapter of the evolutionary saga of these animals. In a paper published February 4, 2015 in the scientific journal Nature, the discovery of three new extinct monkeys from eastern Peru hints strongly that South American monkeys have an African ancestry."