A University of Michigan professor says the discovery of a 47 million-year-old fossil may be from a primate species related to humans, apes and monkeys.

Michigan paleontology Professor Philip Gingeric, who also serves as the president-elect of the Paleontological Society of the United States, said the newly discovered fossil also supports the adapid theory of evolution, The Wall Street Journal said Monday.

A major ongoing evolutionary debate is focused on whether humans descended from an ape-like group called the tarsidae, the known descendants of the modern Asian primate tarsier, or the adapidae, whose modern descendant is Madagascar's lemur.