Anthropomorpha (original spelling: Antropomorpha) is a defunct taxon, replaced by ''

Primates Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians (monkeys and apes, the latter including huma ...

''. The order was established by Carl Linnaeus in the first edition of his book

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

(1735) for genera '' Homo'' (humans), ''

Simia In his '' Systema Naturae'' of 1758, Carl Linnaeus divided the Order Primates within ''Mammalia'' into four genera: ''Homo'', ''Simia'', ''Lemur'', and ''Vespertilio''. His ''Vespertilio'' included all bats, and has since been moved from Primates ...

'' (monkeys and apes in general) and '' Bradypus'' (sloths). The taxon is notable for the history of human taxonomy as the first to combine

apes Apes (collectively Hominoidea ) are a clade of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (though they were more widespread in Africa, most of Asia, and as well as Europe in prehistory), which together with its sister g ...

(Linnaeus' ''

'') and humans under the same clade. In the 1758 edition of the same book, Linnaeus discarded this name and began to use the word

, which has replaced Anthropomorpha completely. A dissertation on the ''Anthropomorpha'' was published by Linnaeus' student Christian Emmanuel Hoppius in 1760. The name is no longer considered valid, as the animals that were included within Anthropomorpha are now believed to belong to multiple

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

s. For example, two-toed sloths were included within Anthropomorpha, but are now considered to be in the family Choloepodidae, which is not closely related to the primates.

Comte de Buffon Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent F ...

correctly rejected the combination of sloths and primates within the same order.

References

{{reflist Obsolete primate taxa Mammal orders