preprimaten.adj.

1927 W. K. Gregory & M. Hellman in Q. Rev. Biol. 2 444/1 We therefore prefer to accept this direct evidence..rather than to invent entirely hypothetical and unknown stages leading back to unknown stem forms of pre-primates in the Paleocene or Upper Cretaceous.

1931 E. A. Hooton Up from Ape ii. 69 When the insectivorous pre-primate became a hand-feeder and a manipulator of objects, it opened up for its descendants a new route of evolutionary progress.

1971 G. H. Bourne Ape People xiii. 322 The slope of the jaw seemed to be more like that of a modern preprimate known as the tarsier.

1996 New Scientist 18 May 46/2 The pre-primates must have had behaviour patterns quite different from anything we can imagine.

1931 E. A. Hooton Up from Ape ii. 67 Our arboreal pre-primate ancestors must have been very closely similar to the existing tree shrews of the Order Insectivora.

1955 C. Kirkpatrick Family as Process & Instit. i. 29 Humans differ from, at least preprimate, animals in regard to the absence of a mating cycle.

1991 Current Anthropol. 32 414/1 The antiviolent tendency we documented..in villages..might relate, then, to the near absence of violence in pre-primate species.