100 Years of Primate Paleontology (original) (raw)
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Terrestrial apes and phylogenetic trees
Proceedings of the National Academy of …, 2010
The image that best expresses Darwin's thinking is the tree of life. However, Darwin's human evolutionary tree lacked almost everything because only the Neanderthals were known at the time and they were considered one extreme expression of our own species. Darwin believed that the root of the human tree was very deep and in Africa. It was not until 1962 that the root was shown to be much more recent in time and definitively in Africa. On the other hand, some neo-Darwinians believed that our family tree was not a tree, because there were no branches, but, rather, a straight stem. The recent years have witnessed spectacular discoveries in Africa that take us close to the origin of the human tree and in Spain at Atapuerca that help us better understand the origin of the Neanderthals as well as our own species. The final form of the tree, and the number of branches, remains an object of passionate debate.
Evolutionary Anthropology, 2005
Most primates live in trees, and many of them have strikingly human-like hands and faces. Scientists who study primate evolution agree that these two facts must be connected in some way. The details, however, are a matter of debate. Early theories explained the human-like peculiarities of primates simply as arboreal adaptations. More recent accounts have traced the origins of these peculiarities to more specific ways of atboreal life, involving leaping locomotion, shrub-layer foraging, visually guided predation on insects, or fruit-eating. The features that make primates resemble humans are familiar fare in introductory physical anthropology courses. Most of them are apparent to thoughtful zoo-goers. The chief primate peculiarities (Fig. 1) can be grouped under five headings: Grasping extremities: Primates have soft, moist, pudgy palms and soles covered with fingerprint ridges. The first ("big") toes, and often the thumbs as well, are splayed apart from the adjacent digits and oppose them in grasping tree branches and other objects. (Our own oddly specialized feet no longer fit this description, but our hands do.) Claw loss. The first toes of primates, and usually the other digits as well, are tipped with flattened, shieldshaped nails instead of the pointed claws seen in more typical mammals. Optic convergence and orbital approximation: In all primates, the optic axes are convergent-that is, both eyes point in the same direction. Matt Cartmill is Professor in the Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University. He has written extensively on the comparative anatomy and evolutionary biology of primates and other arboreal mammals, and on the history and philosophy of theories in evolutionary anthropology. He is the co-author (with W.L. Hylander and J. Shafland) of Human Structure (1 987) and Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physica/Anthropo/ogy. His history of ideas about hunting and human origins, A View
American Journal of Primatology, 1981
Many primatologists earn their keep comparing the morphology, ecology, behavior, and distribution of living primates to determine how these are interrelated and how they shape individual and species fitness. History plays a role, of course, in determining primate morphology, ecology, behavior, and geography, and a common goal of com-