Scholars@Duke
Douglas Martin Boyer

Douglas Martin Boyer

Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology
Evolutionary Anthropology

Selected Publications

Biomechanical and morphological determinants of maximal jumping performance in callitrichine monkeys.

Journal Article J Exp Biol · September 15, 2024 Jumping is a crucial behavior in fitness-critical activities including locomotion, resource acquisition, courtship displays and predator avoidance. In primates, paleontological evidence suggests selection for enhanced jumping ability during their early evo ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dental topography of prosimian premolars predicts diet: A comparison in premolar and molar dietary classification accuracies.

Journal Article American journal of biological anthropology · September 2024 ObjectivesThis study tests whether (1) premolar topography of extant "prosimians" (strepsirrhines and tarsiers) successfully predicts diet and (2) whether the combination of molar and premolar topography yields higher classification accuracy than ... Full text Cite

Comparison of dental topography of marmosets and tamarins (Callitrichidae) to other platyrrhine primates using a novel freeware pipeline

Journal Article Journal of Mammalian Evolution · March 1, 2024 Dental topographic metrics (DTMs), which quantify different aspects of the shape of teeth, are powerful tools for studying dietary adaptation and evolution in mammals. Current DTM protocols usually rely on proprietary software, which may be unavailable to ... Full text Cite

Increasing the impact of vertebrate scientific collections through 3D imaging: The openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network.

Journal Article Bioscience · March 2024 The impact of preserved museum specimens is transforming and increasing by three-dimensional (3D) imaging that creates high-fidelity online digital specimens. Through examples from the openVertebrate (oVert) Thematic Collections Network, we describe how we ... Full text Cite

Functional morphology of plesiadapiform distal phalanges and implications for the evolution of arboreality in Paleogene euarchontans

Journal Article Journal of Mammalian Evolution · December 1, 2023 With a few exceptions, crown-clade Primates differ from other arboreal mammalian clades by having nails instead of claws on most post-axial digits. Distal phalanx morphology of close extant and fossil relatives of crown-clade Primates provides a context in ... Full text Cite

Jumping performance in tree squirrels: Insights into primate evolution.

Journal Article J Hum Evol · July 2023 Morphological traits suggesting powerful jumping abilities are characteristic of early crown primate fossils. Because tree squirrels lack certain 'primatelike' grasping features but frequently travel on the narrow terminal branches of trees, they make a vi ... Full text Link to item Cite

Data sharing in biological anthropology

Journal Article American Journal of Biological Anthropology · August 1, 2022 Open data sharing democratizes science by making data more equitably available throughout the world. Furthermore, open data sharing improves the reproducibility and quality of research and enables new collaborations powered by the freely available data. Op ... Full text Cite

Reconstructing dietary ecology of extinct strepsirrhines (Primates, Mammalia) with new approaches for characterizing and analyzing tooth shape

Journal Article Paleobiology · November 27, 2021 The morphological and ecological diversity of lemurs and lorisiformes once rivaled that of the rest of the primate order. Here, we assemble a dataset of 3D models representing the second mandibular molars of a wide range of extant and fossil strepsirrhines ... Full text Cite

SlicerMorph: An open and extensible platform to retrieve, visualize and analyse 3D morphology

Journal Article Methods in Ecology and Evolution · October 1, 2021 Large-scale digitization projects such as #ScanAllFishes and oVert are generating high-resolution microCT scans of vertebrates by the thousands. Data from these projects are shared with the community using aggregate 3D specimen repositories like MorphoSour ... Full text Cite

Evaluating the responses of three closely related small mammal lineages to climate change across the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum

Journal Article Paleobiology · August 1, 2021 Interpreting the impact of climate change on vertebrates in the fossil record can be complicated by the effects of potential biotic drivers on morphological patterns observed in taxa. One promising area where this impact can be assessed is a high-resolutio ... Full text Cite

New dentaries of Chiromyoides (Primatomorpha, Plesiadapidae) and a reassessment of the “mammalian woodpecker” ecological niche

Journal Article Geobios · July 1, 2021 Based on their relatively large, chisel-like incisors and robust dentaries, species of the Paleocene plesiadapid mammal Chiromyoides have been described as potential ecological analogues of either seed-eating rodents or the unusually specialized lemur Daub ... Full text Cite

Unveiling the third dimension in morphometry with automated quantitative volumetric computations.

Journal Article Scientific reports · July 2021 As computed tomography and related technologies have become mainstream tools across a broad range of scientific applications, each new generation of instrumentation produces larger volumes of more-complex 3D data. Lagging behind are step-wise improvements ... Full text Cite

A statistical pipeline for identifying physical features that differentiate classes of 3D shapes

Journal Article Annals of Applied Statistics · June 1, 2021 The recent curation of large-scale databases with 3D surface scans of shapes has motivated the development of tools that better detect global patterns in morphological variation. Studies, which focus on identifying differences between shapes, have been lim ... Full text Cite

Insights from macroevolutionary modelling and ancestral state reconstruction into the radiation and historical dietary ecology of Lemuriformes (Primates, Mammalia).

Journal Article BMC ecology and evolution · April 2021 BackgroundLemurs once rivalled the diversity of rest of the primate order despite thier confinement to the island of Madagascar. We test the adaptive radiation model of Malagasy lemur diversity using a novel combination of phylogenetic comparative ... Full text Cite

First navicular remains of a European adapiform (Anchomomys frontanyensis) from the Middle Eocene of the Eastern Pyrenees (Catalonia, Spain): implications for early primate locomotor behavior and navicular evolution.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · February 2020 Featured Publication We describe the first known navicular bones for an Eocene euprimate from Europe and assess their implications for early patterns of locomotor evolution in primates. Recovered from the fossil site of Sant Jaume de Frontanyà-3C (Barcelona, Spain), the navicu ... Full text Cite

Vertical support use and primate origins.

Journal Article Sci Rep · August 26, 2019 Adaptive scenarios of crown primate origins remain contentious due to uncertain order of acquisition and functional significance of the clade's diagnostic traits. A feature of the talus bone in the ankle, known as the posterior trochlear shelf (PTS), is we ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

My branch is your branch: Talar morphology correlates with relative substrate size in platyrrhines at Tiputini Biodiversity Station, Ecuador.

Journal Article J Hum Evol · August 2019 Given that most species of primates are predominantly arboreal, maintaining the ability to move among branches of varying sizes has presumably been a common selective force in primate evolution. However, empirical evaluations of the relationships between m ... Full text Link to item Cite

Carotid foramen size in the human skull tracks developmental changes in cerebral blood flow and brain metabolism.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · May 2019 ObjectivesIn humans, neuronal processes related to brain development elevate the metabolic rate of brain tissue relative to the body during early childhood. This phenomenon has been hypothesized to contribute to slow somatic growth in preadolescen ... Full text Cite

ariaDNE: A robustly implemented algorithm for Dirichlet energy of the normal

Journal Article Methods in Ecology and Evolution · April 1, 2019 Shape characterizers are metrics that quantify aspects of the overall geometry of a three-dimensional (3D) digital surface. When computed for biological objects, the values of a shape characterizer are largely independent of homology interpretations and of ... Full text Cite

New fossils, systematics, and biogeography of the oldest known crown primate Teilhardina from the earliest Eocene of Asia, Europe, and North America.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · March 2019 Omomyiform primates are among the most basal fossil haplorhines, with the oldest classified in the genus Teilhardina and known contemporaneously from Asia, Europe, and North America during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) ∼56 mya. Characterizati ... Full text Cite

A digital collection of rare and endangered lemurs and other primates from the Duke Lemur Center.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2019 Scientific study of lemurs, a group of primates found only on Madagascar, is crucial for understanding primate evolution. Unfortunately, lemurs are among the most endangered animals in the world, so there is a strong impetus to maximize as much scientific ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Oldest evidence for grooming claws in euprimates.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · September 2018 Euprimates are unusual among mammals in having fingers and toes with flat nails. While it seems clear that the ancestral stock from which euprimates evolved had claw-bearing digits, the available fossil record has not yet contributed a detailed understandi ... Full text Cite

Fossil lemurs from Egypt and Kenya suggest an African origin for Madagascar's aye-aye.

Journal Article Nature communications · August 2018 In 1967 G.G. Simpson described three partial mandibles from early Miocene deposits in Kenya that he interpreted as belonging to a new strepsirrhine primate, Propotto. This interpretation was quickly challenged, with the assertion that Propotto was not a pr ... Full text Cite

Development and Assessment of Fully Automated and Globally Transitive Geometric Morphometric Methods, With Application to a Biological Comparative Dataset With High Interspecific Variation.

Journal Article Anat Rec (Hoboken) · April 2018 Automated geometric morphometric methods are promising tools for shape analysis in comparative biology, improving researchers' abilities to quantify variation extensively (by permitting more specimens to be analyzed) and intensively (by characterizing shap ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Group-wise Shape Correspondence of Variable and Complex Objects.

Conference Proc SPIE Int Soc Opt Eng · March 2018 We present a group-wise shape correspondence method for analyzing variable and complex objects in a population study. The proposed method begins with the standard spherical harmonics (SPHARM) point distribution models (PDM) with their spherical mappings. I ... Full text Link to item Cite

New adapiform primate fossils from the late Eocene of Egypt

Journal Article Historical Biology · February 17, 2018 Caenopithecine adapiform primates are currently represented by two genera from the late Eocene of Egypt (Afradapis and Aframonius) and one from the middle Eocene of Switzerland (Caenopithecus). All are somewhat anthropoid-like in several aspects of their d ... Full text Cite

Scaling of bony canals for encephalic vessels in euarchontans: Implications for the role of the vertebral artery and brain metabolism.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · January 2018 Supplying the central nervous system with oxygen and glucose for metabolic activities is a critical function for all animals at physiologic, anatomical, and behavioral levels. A relatively proximate challenge to nourishing the brain is maintaining adequate ... Full text Cite

Postcrania of the most primitive euprimate and implications for primate origins.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · October 2017 The fossil record of early primates is largely comprised of dentitions. While teeth can indicate phylogenetic relationships and dietary preferences, they say little about hypotheses pertaining to the positional behavior or substrate preference of the ances ... Full text Cite

Semi-supervised determination of pseudocryptic morphotypes using observer-free characterizations of anatomical alignment and shape.

Journal Article Ecology and evolution · July 2017 Accurate, quantitative characterization of complex shapes is recognized as a key methodological challenge in biology. Recent development of automated three-dimensional geometric morphometric protocols (auto3dgm) provides a promising set of tools to help ad ... Full text Cite

Physical activity alters limb bone structure but not entheseal morphology.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · June 2017 Studies of ancient human skeletal remains frequently proceed from the assumption that individuals with robust limb bones and/or rugose, hypertrophic entheses can be inferred to have been highly physically active during life. Here, we experimentally test th ... Full text Cite

Quantification of the position and depth of the flexor hallucis longus groove in euarchontans, with implications for the evolution of primate positional behavior.

Journal Article Am J Phys Anthropol · June 2017 OBJECTIVE: On the talus, the position and depth of the groove for the flexor hallucis longus tendon have been used to infer phylogenetic affinities and positional behaviors of fossil primates. This study quantifies aspects of the flexor hallucis longus gro ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Open data and digital morphology.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · April 2017 Over the past two decades, the development of methods for visualizing and analysing specimens digitally, in three and even four dimensions, has transformed the study of living and fossil organisms. However, the initial promise that the widespread applicati ... Full text Cite

The evolutionary radiation of plesiadapiforms.

Journal Article Evolutionary anthropology · April 2017 Very shortly after the disappearance of the non-avian dinosaurs, the first mammals that had features similar to those of primates started appearing. These first primitive forms went on to spawn a rich diversity of plesiadapiforms, often referred to as arch ... Full text Cite

Introducing molaR: a New R Package for Quantitative Topographic Analysis of Teeth (and Other Topographic Surfaces)

Journal Article Journal of Mammalian Evolution · December 1, 2016 Researchers studying mammalian dentitions from functional and adaptive perspectives increasingly have moved towards using dental topography measures that can be estimated from 3D surface scans, which do not require identification of specific homologous lan ... Full text Open Access Cite

Wear and its effects on dental topography measures in howling monkeys (Alouatta palliata).

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · December 2016 ObjectivesThree dental topography measurements: Dirichlet Normal Energy (DNE), Relief Index (RFI), and Orientation Patch Count Rotated (OPCR) are examined for their interaction with measures of wear, within and between upper and lower molars in Al ... Full text Open Access Cite

Stem members of Platyrrhini are distinct from catarrhines in at least one derived cranial feature.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · November 2016 The pterion, on the lateral aspect of the cranium, is where the zygomatic, frontal, sphenoid, squamosal, and parietal bones approach and contact. The configuration of these bones distinguishes New and Old World anthropoids: most extant platyrrhines exhibit ... Full text Open Access Cite

Lower molar shape and size in prosimian and platyrrhine primates.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · October 2016 The goal of this research is to evaluate the relative strength of the influences of diet, size, and phylogenetic signal on dental geometric shape. Accurate comprehension of these factors and their interaction is important for reconstructing diet and derivi ... Full text Cite

First virtual endocasts of adapiform primates.

Journal Article J Hum Evol · October 2016 Well-preserved crania of notharctine adapiforms from the Eocene of North America provide the best direct evidence available for inferring neuroanatomy and encephalization in early euprimates (crown primates). Virtual endocasts of the notharctines Notharctu ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Internal carotid arterial canal size and scaling in Euarchonta: Re-assessing implications for arterial patency and phylogenetic relationships in early fossil primates.

Journal Article J Hum Evol · August 2016 Primate species typically differ from other mammals in having bony canals that enclose the branches of the internal carotid artery (ICA) as they pass through the middle ear. The presence and relative size of these canals varies among major primate clades. ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Surfaces and spaces: Troubleshooting the study of dietary niche space overlap between North American stem primates and rodents

Journal Article Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties · June 1, 2016 Dental topographic metrics provide quantitative, biologically meaningful data on the threedimensional (3D) form of teeth. In this study, three dental topographic metrics (Dirichlet normal energy (DNE), relief index (RFI), and orientation patch count rotate ... Full text Cite

The first major primate extinction: An evaluation of paleoecological dynamics of North American stem primates using a homology free measure of tooth shape.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · April 2016 ObjectivesThe disappearance of the North American plesiadapoids (stem primates, or plesiadapiforms) in the latest Paleocene has been attributed to competition with rodents over dietary resources. This study compares molar morphology of plesiadapoi ... Full text Cite

A collection of non-human primate computed tomography scans housed in MorphoSource, a repository for 3D data.

Journal Article Scientific data · February 2016 A dataset of high-resolution microCT scans of primate skulls (crania and mandibles) and certain postcranial elements was collected to address questions about primate skull morphology. The sample consists of 489 scans taken from 431 specimens, representing ... Full text Cite

Astragalar and calcaneal morphology of the middle Eocene primate Anchomomys frontanyensis (Anchomomyini): Implications for early primate evolution.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · February 2016 Astragali and calcanei of Anchomomys frontanyensis, a small adapiform from the middle Eocene of Sant Jaume de Frontanyà (Southern Pyrenean basins, northeastern Spain) are described in detail. Though these bones have been known for some time, they have neve ... Full text Cite

Detailed Anatomical Orientations for Certain Types of Morphometric Measurements Can Be Determined Automatically With Geometric Algorithms.

Journal Article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · November 2015 Morphometric datasets only convey useful information about variation when measurement landmarks and relevant anatomical axes are clearly defined. We propose that anatomical axes of 3D digital models of bones can be standardized prior to measurement using a ... Full text Cite

Distinct functional roles of primate grasping hands and feet during arboreal quadrupedal locomotion.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · November 2015 It has long been thought that quadrupedal primates successfully occupy arboreal environments, in part, by relying on their grasping feet to control balance and propulsion, which frees their hands to test unstable branches and forage. If this interlimb deco ... Full text Cite

Predicting euarchontan body mass: A comparison of tarsal and dental variables.

Journal Article Am J Phys Anthropol · July 2015 OBJECTIVE: Multiple meaningful ecological characterizations of a species revolve around body mass. Because body mass cannot be directly measured in extinct taxa, reliable body mass predictors are needed. Many published body mass prediction equations rely o ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Evolution of postural diversity in primates as reflected by the size and shape of the medial tibial facet of the talus.

Journal Article Am J Phys Anthropol · May 2015 OBJECTIVES: Comprehensive quantification of the shape and proportions of the medial tibial facet (MTF) of the talus (=astragalus) has been lacking for Primates and their closest relatives. In this study, aspects of MTF form were quantified and employed to ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Functional morphology of the hallucal metatarsal with implications for inferring grasping ability in extinct primates.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · March 2015 Primate evolutionary morphologists have argued that selection for life in a fine branch niche resulted in grasping specializations that are reflected in the hallucal metatarsal (Mt1) morphology of extant "prosimians", while a transition to use of relativel ... Full text Cite

Oldest known euarchontan tarsals and affinities of Paleocene Purgatorius to Primates.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · February 2015 Earliest Paleocene Purgatorius often is regarded as the geologically oldest primate, but it has been known only from fossilized dentitions since it was first described half a century ago. The dentition of Purgatorius is more primitive than those of all kno ... Full text Cite

The effect of differences in methodology among some recent applications of shearing quotients.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · January 2015 A shearing quotient (SQ) is a way of quantitatively representing the Phase I shearing edges on a molar tooth. Ordinary or phylogenetic least squares regression is fit to data on log molar length (independent variable) and log sum of measured shearing crest ... Full text Open Access Cite

A new fully automated approach for aligning and comparing shapes.

Journal Article Anat Rec (Hoboken) · January 2015 Three-dimensional geometric morphometric (3DGM) methods for placing landmarks on digitized bones have become increasingly sophisticated in the last 20 years, including greater degrees of automation. One aspect shared by all 3DGM methods is that the researc ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Primate tarsal bones from Egerkingen, Switzerland, attributable to the middle Eocene adapiform Caenopithecus lemuroides.

Journal Article PeerJ · January 2015 The middle Eocene species Caenopithecus lemuroides, known solely from the Egerkingen fissure fillings in Switzerland, was the first Paleogene fossil primate to be correctly identified as such (by Ludwig Rütimeyer in 1862), but has long been represented onl ... Full text Cite

Primate origins and supraordinal relationships: Morphological evidence

Chapter · January 1, 2015 There are five major scenarios that have been advanced to account for the early events in the origination of the order Primates: a transition from terrestriality to arboreality, the adoption of a grasp-leaping mode of locomotion, the evolution of features ... Full text Cite

Persistent homology transform for modeling shapes and surfaces

Journal Article Information and Inference · December 1, 2014 We introduce a statistic, the persistent homology transform (PHT), to model surfaces in R3 and shapes in R2. This statistic is a collection of persistence diagrams-multiscale topological summaries used extensively in topological data analysis. We use the P ... Full text Cite

Lumbar vertebral morphology of flying, gliding, and suspensory mammals: implications for the locomotor behavior of the subfossil lemurs Palaeopropithecus and Babakotia.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · October 2014 Lumbar vertebral morphology has been used as an indicator of locomotor behavior in living and fossil mammals. Rigidity within the lumbar region is thought to be important for increasing overall axial rigidity during various forms of locomotion, including b ... Full text Cite

Interspecific scaling patterns of talar articular surfaces within primates and their closest living relatives.

Journal Article J Anat · February 2014 The articular facets of interosseous joints must transmit forces while maintaining relatively low stresses. To prevent overloading, joints that transmit higher forces should therefore have larger facet areas. The relative contributions of body mass and mus ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Dental topography of platyrrhines and prosimians: convergence and contrasts.

Conference American journal of physical anthropology · January 2014 Dental topographic analysis is the quantitative assessment of shape of three-dimensional models of tooth crowns and component features. Molar topographic curvature, relief, and complexity correlate with aspects of feeding behavior in certain living primate ... Full text Cite

A three-dimensional morphometric analysis of the locomotory ecology of Deccanolestes, a eutherian mammal from the Late Cretaceous of India

Journal Article Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology · January 1, 2014 The relationships and ecology of Deccanolestes, a eutherian mammal from the Late Cretaceous of India that is known only from isolated dental, mandibular, and postcranial elements, have been a topic of considerable interest and debate. A recent comprehensiv ... Full text Cite

Hands of early primates.

Journal Article Am J Phys Anthropol · December 2013 Questions surrounding the origin and early evolution of primates continue to be the subject of debate. Though anatomy of the skull and inferred dietary shifts are often the focus, detailed studies of postcrania and inferred locomotor capabilities can also ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Chemostratigraphic implications of spatial variation in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum carbon isotope excursion, SE Bighorn Basin, Wyoming

Journal Article Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems · October 1, 2013 The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is marked by a prominent negative carbon isotope excursion (CIE) of 3-5‰ that has a characteristic rapid onset, stable body, and recovery to near pre-CIE isotopic composition. Although the CIE is the major criter ... Full text Cite

Patterns of astragalar fibular facet orientation in extant and fossil primates and their evolutionary implications.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · July 2013 A laterally sloping fibular facet of the astragalus (=talus) has been proposed as one of few osteological synapomorphies of strepsirrhine primates, but the feature has never been comprehensively quantified. We describe a method for calculating fibular face ... Full text Cite

A calcaneus attributable to the primitive late Eocene anthropoid Proteopithecus sylviae: phenetic affinities and phylogenetic implications.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · July 2013 A well-preserved calcaneus referrable to Proteopithecus sylviae from the late Eocene Quarry L-41 in the Fayum Depression, Egypt, provides new evidence relevant to this taxon's uncertain phylogenetic position. We assess morphological affinities of the new s ... Full text Cite

Diet and dental topography in pitheciine seed predators.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · January 2013 Pitheciines (Pithecia, Chiropotes, and Cacajao) are a specialized clade of Neotropical seed predators that exhibit postcanine teeth with low and rounded cusps and highly crenulated occlusal surface enamel. Data on feeding ecology show that Pithecia consume ... Full text Cite

Evolution and allometry of calcaneal elongation in living and extinct primates.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2013 Specialized acrobatic leaping has been recognized as a key adaptive trait tied to the origin and subsequent radiation of euprimates based on its observed frequency in extant primates and inferred frequency in extinct early euprimates. Hypothesized skeletal ... Full text Cite

Earliest record of Platychoerops (Primates, Plesiadapidae), a new species from Mouras Quarry, Mont de Berru, France.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · November 2012 Plesiadapids are extinct relatives of extant euarchontans (primates, dermopterans, and scandentians), which lived in North America and Europe during the Paleocene and Early Eocene. The only genus of plesiadapid whose species are absent from Paleocene strat ... Full text Cite

New primate first metatarsals from the Paleogene of Egypt and the origin of the anthropoid big toe.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · July 2012 The specialized grasping feet of primates, and in particular the nature of the hallucal grasping capabilities of living strepsirrhines and tarsiers (i.e., 'prosimians'), have played central roles in the study of primate origins. Prior comparative studies o ... Full text Cite

Dental topography indicates ecological contraction of lemur communities.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · June 2012 Understanding the paleoecology of extinct subfossil lemurs requires reconstruction of dietary preferences. Tooth morphology is strongly correlated with diet in living primates and is appropriate for inferring dietary ecology. Recently, dental topographic a ... Full text Cite

Lemur habitat and dental senescence in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · June 2012 Not only can teeth provide clues about diet, but they also can be indicators of habitat quality. Conspecific groups living in different habitats with different kinds of foods may exhibit different rates of dental attrition because their teeth are less well ... Full text Cite

New craniodental material of Pronothodectes gaoi Fox (Mammalia, "Plesiadapiformes") and relationships among members of Plesiadapidae.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · April 2012 Plesiadapidae are a family of Paleogene mammals thought to have phylogenetic affinities with modern Primates. We describe previously unpublished dentitions and the first skull and isolated petrosals of the plesiadapid Pronothodectes gaoi, collected from mi ... Full text Cite

Inner ear evolution in primates through the Cenozoic: implications for the evolution of hearing.

Journal Article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · April 2012 Mammals are unique in being the only group of amniotes that can hear sounds in the upper frequency range (>12 kHz), yet details about the evolutionary development of hearing patterns remain poorly understood. In this study, we used high resolution X-ray co ... Full text Cite

Evolution of the earliest horses driven by climate change in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · February 2012 Body size plays a critical role in mammalian ecology and physiology. Previous research has shown that many mammals became smaller during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), but the timing and magnitude of that change relative to climate change hav ... Full text Cite

Evidence for a grooming claw in a North American adapiform primate: implications for anthropoid origins.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2012 Among fossil primates, the Eocene adapiforms have been suggested as the closest relatives of living anthropoids (monkeys, apes, and humans). Central to this argument is the form of the second pedal digit. Extant strepsirrhines and tarsiers possess a groomi ... Full text Cite

Morphological correlates of the grooming claw in distal phalanges of platyrrhines and other primates: a preliminary study.

Journal Article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · December 2011 Grooming claws are present on the second pedal digits of strepsirhines and on the second and third pedal digits of tarsiers. However, their presence in New World monkeys is often overlooked. As such, the absence of a grooming claw is generally considered a ... Full text Cite

Algorithms to automatically quantify the geometric similarity of anatomical surfaces

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · November 2011 http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3649 ... Cite

Endocranial morphology of Labidolemur kayi (Apatemyidae, Apatotheria) and its relevance to the study of brain evolution in Euarchontoglires

Journal Article Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology · November 1, 2011 Apatemyids are known from the Paleocene and Eocene of Europe, and the Paleocene to Oligocene of North America, and may share a special relationship with Euarchontoglires. The only endocast previously described for an apatemyid pertains to Carcinella sigei ... Full text Cite

New fossils of the oldest North American euprimate Teilhardina brandti (Omomyidae) from the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · October 2011 More than 25 new specimens of Teilhardina brandti, one of the oldest known euprimates, are reported from earliest Eocene strata of the southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. The new fossils include the first upper dentitions, a dentary showing the lower dental f ... Full text Cite

A radiation of arboreal basal eutherian mammals beginning in the Late Cretaceous of India.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · September 2011 India's Late Cretaceous fossil mammals include the only undisputed pre-Tertiary Gondwanan eutherians, such as Deccanolestes. Recent studies have suggested a relationship between Deccanolestes and African and European Paleocene adapisoriculids, which have b ... Full text Cite

Changes in orientation of attritional wear facets with implications for jaw motion in a mixed longitudinal sample of Propithecus edwardsi from Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · September 2011 In many mammalian species, the progressive wearing down of the teeth that occurs over an individual's lifetime has the potential to change dental function, jaw movements, or even feeding habits. The orientation of phase-I wear facets on molars reveals the ... Full text Cite

Comparing Dirichlet normal surface energy of tooth crowns, a new technique of molar shape quantification for dietary inference, with previous methods in isolation and in combination.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · June 2011 Inferred dietary preference is a major component of paleoecologies of extinct primates. Molar occlusal shape correlates with diet in living mammals, so teeth are a potentially useful structure from which to reconstruct diet in extinct taxa. We assess the e ... Full text Cite

Relationships between the expression of the stapedial artery and the size of the obturator foramen in euarchontans: Functional and phylogenetic implications

Journal Article Journal of Human Evolution · January 1, 2011 Cranial arterial patterns are commonly used for determining phylogenetic patterns in extant taxa and have often been used in studies investigating the relationships among fossil taxa. In primitive eutherians, the stapedial artery provided blood to the meni ... Full text Cite

Cranial anatomy of paleocene and eocene labidolemur kayi (Mammalia: Apatotheria), and the relationships of the apatemyidae to other mammals

Journal Article Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society · December 1, 2010 The relationships of the extinct mammalian family Apatemyidae are poorly resolved. Three new, well-preserved crania of Labidolemur kayi from the late Paleocene (Clarkforkian) and early Eocene (Wasatchian) of North America are described in part using ultra ... Full text Cite

Astragalar morphology of Afradapis, a large adapiform primate from the earliest late Eocene of Egypt.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · November 2010 The ∼37 million-year-old Birket Qarun Locality 2 (BQ-2), in the Birket Qarun Formation of Egypt's Fayum Depression, yields evidence for a diverse primate fauna, including the earliest known lorisiforms, parapithecoid anthropoids, and Afradapis longicristat ... Full text Cite

A New Small-Bodied Species of Palaeonictis (Creodonta, Oxyaenidae) from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Journal Article Journal of Mammalian Evolution · July 12, 2010 Oxyaenid creodonts are extinct carnivorous mammals known from the Paleogene of North America, Europe, and Asia. The genus Palaeonictis is represented by three species that together span the late Paleocene to early Eocene of North America, and at least one ... Full text Cite

Evidence of dietary differentiation among late Paleocene-early Eocene plesiadapids (Mammalia, primates).

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · June 2010 Plesiadapis cookei is an extinct relative of extant euarchontans (primates, dermopterans; scandentians), which lived in North America during the late Paleocene. P. cookei body mass has been estimated to be approximately 2.2 kg, making it large compared wit ... Full text Cite

A fossil primate of uncertain affinities from the earliest late Eocene of Egypt.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · May 2010 Paleontological work carried out over the last 3 decades has established that three major primate groups were present in the Eocene of Africa-anthropoids, adapiforms, and advanced strepsirrhines. Here we describe isolated teeth of a previously undocumented ... Full text Cite

New postcrania of Deccanolestes from the Late Cretaceous of India and their bearing on the evolutionary and biogeographic history of euarchontan mammals.

Journal Article Die Naturwissenschaften · April 2010 Extant species of the supraordinal mammal clade Euarchonta belong to the orders Primates, Scandentia, or Dermoptera. The fossil record of euarchontans suggests that they underwent their initial radiation during the Paleocene (65-55 million years ago) in No ... Full text Cite

Hallucal grasping in Nycticebus coucang: further implications for the functional significance of a large peroneal process.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · January 2010 Euprimate grasping feet are characterized by a suite of morphological traits, including an enlarged peroneal process on the base of the first metatarsal, which serves as the insertion site of the peroneus longus muscle. In prosimians, a large process has t ... Full text Cite

Comparative functional morphology of the primate peroneal process.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · December 2009 The first metatarsal of living Primates is characterized by a well-developed peroneal process, which appears proportionally larger in prosimians than in anthropoids. A large peroneal process has been hypothesized to: 1) reflect powerful hallucal grasping, ... Full text Cite

Convergent evolution of anthropoid-like adaptations in Eocene adapiform primates.

Journal Article Nature · October 2009 Adapiform or 'adapoid' primates first appear in the fossil record in the earliest Eocene epoch ( approximately 55 million years (Myr) ago), and were common components of Palaeogene primate communities in Europe, Asia and North America. Adapiforms are commo ... Full text Cite

Semicircular canal system in early primates.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · March 2009 Mammals with more rapid and agile locomotion have larger semicircular canals relative to body mass than species that move more slowly. Measurements of semicircular canals in extant mammals with known locomotor behaviours can provide a basis for testing hyp ... Full text Cite

Relief index of second mandibular molars is a correlate of diet among prosimian primates and other euarchontan mammals.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · December 2008 This study describes and tests a new method of calculating a shape metric known as the relief index (RFI) on lower second molars of extant euarchontan mammals, including scandentians (treeshrews), dermopterans (flying lemurs), and prosimian primates (strep ... Full text Cite

Intrinsic hand proportions of euarchontans and other mammals: implications for the locomotor behavior of plesiadapiforms.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · August 2008 Arboreal primates have distinctive intrinsic hand proportions compared with many other mammals. Within Euarchonta, platyrrhines and strepsirrhines have longer manual proximal phalanges relative to metacarpal length than colugos and terrestrial tree shrews. ... Full text Cite

Proteutheria

Journal Article · January 1, 2008 INTRODUCTION Romer (1966) proposed a new suborder, “Proteutheria,” for insectivorous mammals that had no clear relationship to living insectivorans. Romer's concept of “Proteutheria” included leptictids, zalambdalestids, anagalids, paroxyclaenids, pantoles ... Full text Cite

Evaluating the mitten-gliding hypothesis for paromomyidae and micromomyidae (mammalia, “Plesiadapiformes”) using comparative functional morphology of new paleogene Skeletons

Chapter · January 1, 2008 Teeth of primate-like mammals from the Paleogene (“plesiadapiforms”) have been known for at least 130 years (Gervais, 1877). These fossil taxa are generally recognized as being closely related, but not monophyletic (e.g., Gingerich, 1976; Szalay et al., 19 ... Full text Cite

New skeletons of paleocene-eocene plesiadapiformes: A diversity of arboreal positional behaviors in early primates

Journal Article · December 1, 2007 Knowledge of plesiadapiform skeletal morphology and inferred ecological roles are critical for establishing the evolutionary context that led to the appearance and diversification of Euprimates (see Silcox, this volume). Plesiadapiform dentitions are morph ... Full text Cite

Cranial morphology of a pantolestid eutherian mammal from the eocene bridger formation, Wyoming, USA: Implications for relationships and habitat

Journal Article Journal of Mammalian Evolution · September 1, 2007 Pantolestinae is a eutherian subfamily of mammals whose members are known from the middle early Paleocene through at least the beginning of the Oligocene of North America. They are also known from Europe, and possibly Africa. A lack of information on panto ... Full text Cite

Revisiting the adaptive origins of primates (again).

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · September 2007 Full text Cite

Telemetered electromyography of peroneus longus in Varecia variegata and Eulemur rubriventer: implications for the functional significance of a large peroneal process.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · August 2007 A foot specialized for grasping small branches with a divergent opposable hallux (hallucal grasping) represents a key adaptive complex characterizing almost all arboreal non-human euprimates. Evolution of such grasping extremities probably allowed members ... Full text Cite

Evolution of pedal grasping in Primates.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · July 2007 Full text Cite

New Paleocene skeletons and the relationship of plesiadapiforms to crown-clade primates.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · January 2007 Plesiadapiforms are central to studies of the origin and evolution of primates and other euarchontan mammals (tree shrews and flying lemurs). We report results from a comprehensive cladistic analysis using cranial, postcranial, and dental evidence includin ... Full text Cite

Transient floral change and rapid global warming at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · November 2005 Rapid global warming of 5 degrees to 10 degrees C during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) coincided with major turnover in vertebrate faunas, but previous studies have found little floral change. Plant fossils discovered in Wyoming, United State ... Full text Cite

Grasping primate origins.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · November 2002 The evolutionary history that led to Eocene-and-later primates of modern aspect (Euprimates) has been uncertain. We describe a skeleton of Paleocene plesiadapiform Carpolestes simpsoni that includes most of the skull and many postcranial bones. Phylogeneti ... Full text Cite

New primitive paromomyid from the clarkforkian of wyoming and dental eruption in plesiadapiformes

Journal Article Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology · January 1, 2002 Clarkforkian late Paleocene freshwater limestone from the Clarks Fork Basin, Wyoming, has yielded four specimens of the plesiadapiform paromomyid, Acidomomys hebeticus gen. et sp. nov. A. hebeticus has a strong metaconid on p4, a small double-rooted p3, an ... Full text Cite