How did Monkeys get to South America?

It seems a rather accepted idea is that they may have rafted from Africa to South America.’ ’

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There is much evidence that would show an African origin of the platyrrhine monkeys of South America. First the ocean currents of that time would have facilitated a crossing from Africa to South America and not from North America (Tarling, 1982; cited in Fleagle, 1988). During the middle Oligocene there was a large drop in sea level that may have allowed rafting to be more permissible (Fleagle, 1988).

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Also, from the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution June 27, 2003
Carlos G. Schrago and Claudia A. M. Russo
Laboratorio Biodiversidade Molecular, Departamento de Gentica, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Our estimate for the origin of New World monkeys is in agreement with the hypothesis of a transatlantic journey from Africa to South America, as suggested by the fossil record.

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So that is what the peer reviewed research is showing. Is it definitive? No, but that is how science works.

Engineer, when people have replied to an O.P., does it really make sense to change the content? Why not continue further down the thread?

Well, that is interesting.

Yes it seems they rafted. How do you think they did it? Did Noah make a few stops?I don't see or understand the alternate theory you have. Or do you not have one but feel you need to not believe something that has been researched and been presented as a viable theory.If you are going to say something is not a viable theory you need to present something in opposition to that theory. What is your opposing explanation. To attack something as untrue and to not have an alternative is not just bad form, but lazy and stupid.

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Yes it seems they rafted. How do you think they did it? Did Noah make a few stops?

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I don't know.

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I don't see or understand the alternate theory you have. Or do you not have one but feel you need to not believe something that has been researched and been presented as a viable theory.

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I have some doubts about the ark theory, especially with animals crossing oceans to get to their present habitat after leaving the ark. Evolutionists assume they can raft however, and solve one of my most perplexing issues with ark theory.....

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If you are going to say something is not a viable theory you need to present something in opposition to that theory.

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Well, actually this evolutionary explanation kind of helps out the arkers. and how about a super-explosion of speciation after a so-called flood -- kind of like south america after the oglicene period but biggie-sized? That helps reduce the number of animals needed on board the ark.

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What is your opposing explanation. To attack something as untrue and to not have an alternative is not just bad form, but lazy and stupid.

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I'm not attacking it. I think it's kind of humorous actually. It seems evolutionists are doing the work for creationists and solving the creationists' problems.

Again you seem to be changing the OP. I see you are nothing but a troll and if you dont stop changing the topic I will stop feeding you.This thread is about how did monkeys get to South America. It is not about speciation after the ark. If that is want you want to discuss start another thread.Your ark does not explain how monkeys got to South America. Yes you are. You are trying to attack and belittle the theory. All without proposing an alternative. You know you can't use the ark as an explanation, but you have nothing else. Then you make the ludicrous claim that evolutionists are doing the work for creationists? Somehow, that animals rafted on oceans is evidence for the ark and creationism. Oh please i would love to see the logical hoops you jump through to get that idea to work.I have stopped count of all the fallacies you have presented on all the threads.Here is a list maybe you can add some more to your arguments
Fallacies - Nizkor

No it doesn't help your perplexity. That amount of rafting in the last 4,500 years would mean that we'd be witnessing successful inter-continental crossings regularly now.We don't really have to assume that much for the occasional event, though. Your water problem isn't such a big one when you realise that there's water in the vegetation that they're eating and riding on. Individual animals making such a crossing may be much more frequent, but it depends on there being a pair, and the pair finding a niche when they get to their new habitat. Animals being washed to sea in flash floods and clinging to whatever's available probably happens a lot. But crossing an ocean means the right currents, some nourishment from whatever they're riding on, and the shorter the distance (and it was shorter), the better.I remember once seeing a pair of crabs clinging to a piece of driftwood in the deep Indian ocean (about 20km from land).So, it's a bit like tossing a coin and getting ten heads in a row. It's unlikely to happen often, but it's unlikely that it would never happen.Sloth's walking across many different habitats from Ararat to western Africa, and then rafting, all within a few hundred years, then evolving rapidly into many different species of sloth over a few thousand years is like tossing a coin and getting heads 100,000 times consecutively. Edited by bluegenes, : speling!Edited by bluegenes, : wrong word

My `island hopping theory`: if Australia still had a giant inland sea, the oceans would have been considerably shallower: islands would have been muci more numerous. They island hopped. It would explain the genetic difference between them and African monkeys, as you pointed out.

Continents in the late Eocene, as reconstructed by geologists. Not too bad, especially given the possibility of "island hopping" and the direction of the prevailing currents.As is pointed out in the link you supplied: You do not say why they should have "no water", nor provide any calculations backing up your time scale. Wrong. That's the period for which it rained, according to the Bible. The period for which the Ark was afloat was 371 days. What, all of them? Across the modern distances separating continents? All in a mere 4500 years? Without this happening once in recorded history? Without leaving anyone behind? Apparently not one single species --- nor individual --- among the platyrrhine monkey missed getting on a raft. Nor the sloths, or the armadillos, or the tapirs, or the distinctive groups of freshwater fish ... No, I think the magic flood hypothesis still has its problems.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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Engineer, when people have replied to an O.P., does it really make sense to change the content? Why not continue further down the thread?

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I think it makes sense to clarify the OP because the responses were not connected very well. Maybe it's my fault for not stating the issues. I just assumed everyone knew them.For example:

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This breakup began some 170Ma ago, and the atlantic opened up around 110Ma ago so there has been plenty of time for dramatic speciation. Which is just what we see in the very different new and old world monkeys. Other breakups such as Australia and South America from Antarctica, India from Africa and Madagascar from India occurred later and leave their own marks in the bio-geographic record.

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Say What??? Monkeys didn't show up in South America until the late Oglicene some 40 million years ago.

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from reading your posts I see you probably would try to dispute continental drift, no matter what the evidence.

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So how close was South America to Africa in the late Oglicene? Were trade winds flowing from west to east as they do today, pushing floating debris to the east?http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/j/jet_stream.htm

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If the original poster is a yec and does not believe in continental drift, than the whole thread is useless because he will counter our arguments with some bizarre yec bs.

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It is important to know if he is a yec and/or does not believe in the facts of continental drift in order to decide whether discussion with him is worth the effort.

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ok I'm not a yec.South America was closer to Africa 40 million years ago, but they separated-apart some 160 million years ago (this is 4x as long). Wouldn't it be fair to assume south america was about 3/4 the distance from africa that it is today? What justifies it being closer?When Christopher Columbus sailed to America in a sea-worthy sailing vessel using a compass against the trade winds it took about a month. How well would a monkey-manned raft fare out on the big blue while crossing probably several hundred miles (or more) on sea currents which often follow coastlines, with no water to drink, while fighting off sea predators out there in the hot sun?

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You do not say why they should have "no water",

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Salt water is no good to drink. I think you know this already.

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Provide any calculations backing up your time scale.

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I assumed a sail boat is faster than rafting. How fast do you think an ocean current moves?

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What, all of them? Across the modern distances separating continents? All in a mere 4500 years? Without this happening once in recorded history? Without leaving anyone behind? Apparently not one single species --- nor individual --- among the platyrrhine monkey missed getting on a raft. Nor the sloths, or the armadillos, or the tapirs, or the distinctive groups of freshwater fish ...

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Yeah, they had to make a round trip. You do have a point. Apparantly the return trip is easier, from the map. The evolution approach only requires monkeys and rodents on board.

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Some rafts of flotsam, if they are washed out of rivers during storms and caught in ocean currents, can be more than a mile across.

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So who even needs an ark anymore? They can float on massive islands of debris.

Hey bluegenes, this is a general answer, but I started with you due a pet peeve on genetic dating"Sorry for the length folks, but I'm just following the evidence. As always, I am skeptical of timing from genetic studies. Evolutionary rates can change significantly, and thus to be valid any genetic analysis needs to be tied to fossil evidence where the dates are known, which of course renders the need for genetic dates irrelevant.Thus I prefer to see fossil dates for related organisms where the relationships can be confirmed\validated by the genetic relationships.Personally, I consider genetic "dating" as valid as stratigraphy - it is "soft dating," a relative dating method that serves to confirm the "hard dating" of fossils by radiometric or other means of achieving accurate physical dates.We also need to visit the statement of Message 1 (as currently revised}: This of course depends on what you define as "mammal" but there is fossil evidence that mammals are older than that, with Therapsids dating to 270 million years, by 250 million years ago we had Cynodonts, with mammaliforms populating Pangea some 235 million years ago, and mammalia in the middle Jurassic, 170 million years ago, when we have this view of the world:Palaeos: Page not found

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And the earliest fossil placental mammal is 125 million years old.http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...20425_firstmammal.html

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"We found the earliest ancestor, perhaps a great uncle or aunt, or perhaps a great grandparent”albeit 125 million years removed”to all placental mammals," said Zhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "It is significant because a vast majority of mammals alive today are placentals."

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We also see early primates evolving in the late cretaceous, that period before the end of the dinosaurs.Palaeos: Page not found

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Primates: Lemurs, monkeys, aye-ayes, Anglicans & apes.
Range: from the Late Cretaceous or early Paleocene.
Characters: Shortened rostrum; addition of hypocone & loss of paraconid from basic tribosphenic pattern; bunodont cusps; loss of at least 1 incisor and 1 premolar in all but most basal forms; orbits face anteriorly, with stereoscopic vision & well-developed vision; ethmoid exposed on orbital wall; postorbital bar; enlarged brain; floor of auditory bulla from petrosal; clavicle retained as prominent element of pectoral girdle; shoulder joint with broad mobility; digits 5/5; opposable digits; tactile pads at ends of digits; elongated hind limb; facultative bipedalism common; nail on hallux and other digits; herbivorous or omnivorous; 2 mammaries; 1-2 young per pregnancy; long gestation and developmental time; frequently highly social, with flexible dominance hierarchies; strongly adapted to arboreal life.

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And the oldest fossil primate-like mammal is some 70 million years old, so the 66 million years for mammals is incorrect. I also expect these ages to be pushed back as more fossils are found (new finds can't make the earliest mammal occur later, eh?).http://www.leeds.ac.uk/chb/lectures/anthl_09.html

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The oldest fossil that anyone considers to be primate-like is a animal called Purgatorius ceratops, which consists of a single tooth found in late-Cretaceous rocks in Montana. This is dated to approximately 70 mya.
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The first unequivocal primates occur about 50 mya. There are two main groups identified: Adapiformes which are usually considered to be ancestral to modern Strepsirhines; Tarsiiformes which are (mostly) considered to be early Haplorhines.
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The distinction between Catarrhines and Platyrrhines occurred sometime in the Oligocene. However, there is a distinct shortage of fossils (isn't there always). Branisella is a good example of a New World Monkey. The African fossils from this period are almost all from the El Fayum valley in Egypt. The example here is Apidium.

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There are a number of questions concerning New World Monkeys. South America was an island continent at this period, so where did they come from? Rafting or island hopping have been suggested. Also, primates die out in North America... Generalisations about Oligocene NWM are difficult to make because of a severe shortage of specimens. There is some indication that they may not have yet achieved full orbital closure and have more laterally directed orbits than extant species, but this is disputed.

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(color for emphasis)So sometime in the Oligocene ... that's the time frame.Oligocene - Wikipedia

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Mountain building in western North America continued, and the Alps started to rise in Europe as the African plate continued to push north into the Eurasian plate, isolating the remnants of the Tethys Sea. A brief marine incursion marks the early Oligocene in Europe. Oligocene marine exposures are rare in North America. There appears to have been a land bridge in the early Oligocene between North America and Europe since the faunas of the two regions are very similar. During sometime in the Oligocene, South America was finally detached from Antarctica and drifted north towards North America. It also allowed the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to flow, rapidly cooling the continent.

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(color for emphasis)Palaeos: Page not found

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There was an increase in volcanic activity, and plate tectonic movement, as India collided with Asia. The last remnant of the supercontinent of Gondwanaland broke up as Australia and South America both separated from Antarctica.

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The Oligocene also marked the start of a generalized cooling, with glaciers forming in Antarctica for the first time during the Cenozoic. The increase in ice sheets led to a fall in sea level. The tropics diminished, giving way to cooler woodlands and grasslands. Although there was a slight warming period in the late Oligocene, the overall cooling trend was to continue, culminating in the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene.

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But Africa is already separated from South America and Australia, so there is no land bridge path from that end.http://www.noneotheabove.com/articles/earth.html

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Thus we can pretty well eliminate any land bridges, and I am skeptical about islands.To consider rafting we need to look at current patterns, and thus, perhaps, the most significant element is that the Antarctic Circumpolar Current flows for the first time around Antarctica, thus creating a strong flow from west to east:Antarctic Circumpolar Current - Wikipedia

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The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is an ocean current that flows from west to east around Antarctica. An alternate name for the ACC is the West Wind Drift. The ACC is the dominant circulation feature of the Southern Ocean and, at approximately 125 Sverdrups, the largest ocean current [1]. It keeps warm ocean waters away from Antarctica, enabling that continent to maintain its huge ice sheet.

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This is an extremely powerful and constant current, and it sets up the South Atlantic Gyre, which today is composed of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the Benguela Current up the west coast of Africa, the South Equatorial Current that flows from Africa west to South America just below the equator, and the Brazil Current that flows down the east coast of South America.The rafters then would have to use the South Equatorial Current to "go with the flow" from Africa to SA. Curiously, when we look up at that last map again, we see that at the equator the distance in the Oligocene from Africa to SA was nowhere near as far as it is today.Now that we are looking at current patterns, we can eliminate North America, as the rafters would need to travel from the north flowing north atlantic gyre (Gulf stream anyone?) through the doldrums to get to the south atlantic gyre, or take the pacific side and end up out in mid pacific from the north flowing south pacific gyre and the likely westward flowing current between N&S America.Conclusion: rafting from Africa to S. America is feasible.The next thing then is to consider what kinds of animals are capable of surviving rafting trips, and which are not, and does this also match the pattern of species.Is that enough for now?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : subtitle

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Sloth's walking across many different habitats from Ararat to western Africa, and then rafting, all within a few hundred years, then evolving rapidly into many different species of sloth over a few thousand years is like tossing a coin and getting heads 100,000 times consecutively.

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How about speciation on steroids? ;-)

You want to dispute this theory. People have given you the particulars of the theory and you continue to imply that you think it is stupid. Just because you don't agree with a scientific theory doesn't make it wrong.You have no alternatives. So how can you continue to question it.As for

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When Christopher Columbus sailed to America in a sea-worthy sailing vessel using a compass against the trade winds it took about a month. How well would a monkey-manned raft fare out on the big blue while crossing probably several hundred miles (or more) on sea currents which often follow coastlines, with no water to drink, while fighting off sea predators out there in the hot sun?

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this has been addressed in a previous post, but you seem to be too obtuse to understand, or are just providing more evidence that you are a troll with an agenda that refuses to consider anything other than your preconceived ideas.As Sherlock Holmes said "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains - no matter how implausible - must be the truth."

Hi Engineer, interesting question. The problem with the ark theory is also "why there and only there" for some species, as all lands are equally accessible by the usual "rafting" explanations.In discussing this with a young YEC once he proposed that Koalas floated on rafts of eucalyptus trees, thus ending up in Australia with the single food in their diet that does not show up anywhere else on earth. This was called the "Magic Koala" theory. There are many such links between species that are interdependent. Co-evolution explains them quite nicely, also over many many generations.So if we can dispense with the "after the ark raft" theoretics for now, I think the point to focus on is what animals are capable of rafting, which are not, and does this pattern appear in the fossil record.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
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