Data from: Early arrival and climatically-linked geographic expansion of New World monkeys from tiny African ancestors

New World monkeys (platyrrhines) are one of the most diverse groups of
primates, occupying today a wide range of ecosystems in the American
tropics and exhibiting large variations in ecology, morphology, and
behavior. Although the relationships among the almost 200 living species
are relatively well understood, we lack robust estimates of the timing of
origin, ancestral morphology, and geographic range evolution of the clade.
Here we integrate paleontological and molecular evidence to assess the
evolutionary dynamics of extinct and extant platyrrhines. We develop novel
analytical frameworks to infer the evolution of body mass, changes in
latitudinal ranges through time, and species diversification rates using a
phylogenetic tree of living and fossil taxa. Our results show that
platyrrhines originated 5–10 million years earlier than previously
assumed, dating back to the Middle Eocene. The estimated ancestral
platyrrhine was small – weighing 0.4 kg – and matched the size of their
presumed African ancestors. As the three platyrrhine families diverged, we
recover a rapid change in body mass range. During the Miocene Climatic
Optimum, fossil diversity peaked and platyrrhines reached their widest
latitudinal range, expanding as far South as Patagonia, favored by warm
and humid climate and the lower elevation of the Andes. Finally, global
cooling and aridification after the middle Miocene triggered a geographic
contraction of New World monkeys and increased their extinction rates.
These results unveil the full evolutionary trajectory of an iconic and
ecologically important radiation of monkeys and showcase the necessity of
integrating fossil and molecular data for reliably estimating evolutionary
rates and trends.