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Assamese macaque sitting on tree vegetation

Old world monkeys

The Old World monkey family is, as its name suggests, native to the Old World - Europe, Africa and Asia - although the only European ones are the Gibraltar Barbary macaques. Members of this family include the baboons, langurs and rhesus monkeys, amongst others.

Scientific name: Cercopithecidae

Rank: Family

Distribution

Map showing the distribution of the Old world monkeys taxa

The shading illustrates the diversity of this group - the darker the colour the greater the number of species. Data provided by WWF's Wildfinder.

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When they lived

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About

The Old World monkeys or Cercopithecidae are a group of primates, falling in the superfamily Cercopithecoidea in the clade (or parvorder) of Catarrhini. The Old World monkeys are native to Africa and Asia today, inhabiting a range of environments from tropical rain forest to savanna, shrubland and mountainous terrain, and are also known from Europe in the fossil record. However, a (possibly introduced) free-roaming group of monkeys still survives in Gibraltar (Europe) to this day. Old World monkeys include many of the most familiar species of nonhuman primates, such as baboons and macaques.

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Classification

  1. Life
  2. Animals
  3. Vertebrates
  4. Mammals
  5. Primates
  6. Old world monkeys

BBC News about Old world monkeys

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