Lemurs ( ) are a
clade of
strepsirrhine primates endemic to the island of
Madagascar. The word "lemur" derives from the word
lemures (ghosts or spirits) from
Roman mythology and was first used to describe a
slender loris due to its
nocturnal habits and slow pace, but was later applied to the primates on Madagascar. Although lemurs often are confused with ancestral primates, the
anthropoid primates (
monkeys,
apes, and
humans) did not evolve from them; instead, lemurs merely share morphological and behavioral traits with
basal primates. Lemurs arrived in Madagascar around 62 to 65 mya by rafting on mats of vegetation at a time when ocean currents favored
oceanic dispersal to the island. Since that time, lemurs have
evolved to cope with an extremely seasonal environment and their
adaptations give them a level of diversity that rivals that of all other primate groups. Until shortly after humans arrived on the island around 2,000 years ago, there were lemurs as large as a male
gorilla. Today, there are
nearly 100 species of lemurs, and most of those species have been discovered or promoted to full species status since the 1990s; however, lemur
taxonomic classification is controversial and depends on which
species concept is used. Even the higher-level taxonomy is disputed, with some experts preferring to place most lemurs within the
infraorder Lemuriformes, while others prefer Lemuriformes to contain all living strepsirrhines, placing all lemurs in
superfamily Lemuroidea and all
lorises and
galagos in superfamily
Lorisoidea.