Elwyn L. Simons, an intrepid scientist known as the father of modern primate paleontology for his discovery of some of humankind’s earliest antecedents, died on March 6 in Peoria, Ariz. He was 85.

His death was announced by Duke University, where he was an emeritus professor of evolutionary anthropology.

Though Dr. Simons’s career took in myriad fossils, including whales’ feet (in the distant past in which his professional life was lived, the footed whale was no oxymoron), he was concerned in particular with the earliest primates.

“Elwyn made an enormous and really incomparable contribution to the science of human origins, particularly at the very early end of the scale — the background out of which our hominid lineage emerged,” Ian Tattersall, an emeritus curator in the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.