Evolutionary History
Lemurs are not known in the fossil record on Madagascar until the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. Consequently, little is known about the evolution of ruffed lemurs, let alone the entire lemur clade, which comprises the endemic primate population of the island.
Although there is still much debate about the origins of lemurs on Madagascar, it is generally accepted that a single rafting event, similar to the one that brought New World monkeys to South America, occurred around 50–80 million years ago and allowed ancestral lemurs to cross the Mozambique Channel and colonize the island, which had already split from Africa (while it was joined to the Indian subcontinent), approximately 160 million years ago. The resulting founder effect and either non-existent or inferior competition resulted in speciation as the lemur ancestors radiated out to fill open or insufficiently guarded niches. Today, the endemic primate fauna of Madagascar contains over three-quarters of the extant species of the suborder Strepsirrhini, which had been abundant throughout Laurasia and Africa during the Paleocene and Eocene epochs.
Read more about this topic: Ruffed Lemur
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