Adapidae
family of extinct primates
Adapidae is a family of extinct primates that primarily radiated during the Eocene epoch.
Adapid systematics and evolutionary relationships are controversial, but there is fairly good evidence from the postcranial skeleton (everything but the skull, or cranium) that adapids were stem strepsirrhines, members of the group including the living lemurs, lorises, and bushbabies. In particular, the anatomy of the adapid wrist and ankle, such as the position of the groove for the flexor fibularis tendon on the talus bone and the presence of a sloping talo-fibular facet, show derived similarities with those of living strepsirrhines.
However, adapids lacked many of the anatomical specializations characteristic of living strepsirrhines, such as a toothcomb, a toilet-claw on the second pedal digit, and a reduction in the size of the promontory branch of the internal carotid artery.
There are two major branches of adapids, the subfamilies Adapinae and Caenopithecinae. Caenopithecines are sometimes assigned to their own family, Caenopithecidae.
“Adapidae” enters the record as family of extinct primates. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Adapidae, family and extinct can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2381298. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Adapidae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.