Vox Day linked University of Reading on primate origins. Ideologues like Beale never link "scientody" for its own sake; it's always about casting new discoveries as "epicycles" against "Darwin".
If you read the article for its own sake, we learn how animals evolve - through where, and when. The geography wasn't the same in the Eocene as it is now. Neither was the climate. In the elder days of the early Caenozoic, Europe was more like an island-chain, with a Pannonian Sea in what's now Hungary. It was also warmer: a common ancestor to the falcon and the parrot flitted about Denmark. There was much rejoicing among Monty Python fans.
For basis: the mammalian life that emerged after Chicxulub was dispersed and very different between South America, Africa, North America, and Europe. North America had dogs, horses, camels. South America of course was marsupial - spreading across a then-temperate Antarctica to Australia. Africa had the elephant, and hyaena/cats I think.
The paper-proper argues that primates should be listed with North America and not with Europe. North America does not benefit from the currents which keep Europe from being East Labrador. The paper argues that North America wasn't always temperate back then, either. It might even have been worse than Antarctica at the time.
The ur-primate would have been like a dwarf lemur, with hibernation properties. The primate could also migrate better than other animals at the time. I am reminded of Dinosaur (2000) with lemurs and dinosaurs witnessing the asteroid together.
Now: if the dwarf lemur originated in America, I am keen to understand how it got to Europe and then Africa (thence Malagasy) before rafting back to South America / Mesoamerica. Because the Americas nowhere have lemurs. I admit, this won't be the last time North America spawns a species as dies out at home: cf the camel.
BACKDATE 8/10
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