Strepsirrhini or
Strepsirhini (; ) is a
suborder of
primates that includes the
lemuriform primates, which consist of the
lemurs of
Madagascar,
galagos ("bushbabies") and
pottos from Africa, and the
lorises from India and southeast Asia. Also belonging to the suborder are the extinct
adapiform primates, a diverse and widespread group that thrived during the
Eocene (56 to 34 million years ago
[mya]) in Europe, North America, and Asia, but disappeared from most of the
Northern Hemisphere as the climate cooled. The last of the adapiforms died out at the end of the
Miocene (~7 mya). Adapiforms are sometimes referred to as being "lemur-like", although the diversity of both lemurs and adapiforms does not support this comparison. The two leading
taxonomic classifications for the suborder divide living strepsirrhine primates into either two
superfamilies (Lemuroidea and Lorisoidea) within the
infraorder Lemuriformes or two infraorders, Lemuriformes and Lorisiformes. The suborder represents a related group, and replaced the widely used and now obsolete suborder Prosimii ("
prosimians"), which included strepsirrhines and
tarsiers, a grouping based primarily on shared
anatomical traits. Today, Strepsirrhini excludes the tarsiers, which are now grouped in the other major primate suborder,
Haplorhini, along with the monkeys and apes (
simians or anthropoids). Strepsirrhines are often inappropriately referred to as "
living fossils". Instead, they have
evolved for millions of years under
natural selection, and have diversified to fill many
ecological niches. Some of their traits may be derived from
ancestral primates, while others are unique to strepsirrhines.