Adapis was first discovered in southern France. Fossils are known from the early Eocene, to the early Oligocene. The extinction of Adapis at the Eocoene-Oligiocene boundary has been considered to be the result of dramatic global cooling and drying. While North American and European adapiforms did not have access to geographic refuge to evade the cooler and drier conditions in the Northern latitudes, adapiforms in Asia were able to retreat to southern geographic regions that did not experience severe cooling and drying, enabling their survival until the Miocene.
