THE world’s first fossil lemur has stumped zoologists by turning up on the
wrong continent. The creature was unearthed in Asia rather than Africa, where
lemurs are supposed to come from.
Modern lemurs are only found on the island of Madagascar, off the east coast
of Africa. Previous work comparing lemurs and their modern-day primate relatives
hinted at an African birthplace, and researchers suggested that ancestral lemurs
hitched their way across the sea to Madagascar on rafts of vegetation. But now a
team led by Laurent Marivaux of the University of Montpellier has found
30-million-year-old lemur fossil teeth in the…
