Anthropoidea (Simiiformes; cohort Unguiculata, order Primates) Suborder comprising the monkeys, apes, and humans. Monkeys and apes have a common ancestor and diverged in the Oligocene. The dryopithecines of the succeeding Miocene were undoubted apes. The traditional palaeontological view is that these Miocene apes gave rise in turn to three new lines, one leading to the gibbons, another to the great apes, the third to humans. However, on the basis of anatomical characteristics and genetic criteria, it has long been maintained that ancestors of both the gibbons and the orang-utan diverged from the ancestral line of the advanced Primates at an early date and that only subsequently did that line split to give one group comprising humans and another comprising the gorilla and the chimpanzee; recent palaeontological evidence now tends to support this second view.

Anthropoidea Suborder of primates including monkeys, apes and human beings. Anthropoids have flatter, more human like faces, larger brains and are larger in size than prosimian primates.

Anthropoidea See SIMIIFORMES.