Scholars@Duke
Gabriel Yapuncich

Gabriel Yapuncich

Assistant Professor of the Practice of Medical Education
Medical Education

Selected Publications

Comparative biomechanical analysis of jumping between the arboreal northern treeshrew (Tupaia belangeri) and the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius)

Journal Article Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society · December 1, 2025 Jumping allows arboreal mammals to navigate disparate canopy supports. Existing research suggests that the long, mobile limbs of many small primates—including basal primate ancestors—facilitate arboreal jumping performance by extending centre of mass (CoM) ... Full text Cite

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

Journal Article The Journal of experimental biology · September 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 Cite

Jumping performance in tree squirrels: Insights into primate evolution.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · 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 Cite

Using BayesModelS to provide Bayesian- and phylogenetically-informed primate body mass predictions.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · December 2021 An accurate prediction of the body mass of an extinct species can greatly inform the reconstruction of that species' ecology. Therefore, paleontologists frequently predict the body mass of extinct taxa from fossilized materials, particularly dental dimensi ... Full text Cite

Footloose: Articular surface morphology and joint movement potential in the ankles of lorisids and cheirogaleids.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · August 2021 ObjectivesThe competing functional demands of diarthrodial joints, permitting mobility while retaining enough stability to transmit forces across the joint, have been linked with the shape and size of the joint's articular surfaces. A clear unders ... Full text Cite

Predicting body mass of bonobos (Pan paniscus) with human-based morphometric equations.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · February 2020 A primate's body mass covaries with numerous ecological, physiological, and behavioral characteristics. This versatility and potential to provide insight into an animal's life has made body mass prediction a frequent and important objective in paleoanthrop ... Full text Cite

Morphology of the Homo naledi femora from Lesedi.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · September 2019 ObjectivesThe femoral remains recovered from the Lesedi Chamber are among the most complete South African fossil hominin femora discovered to date and offer new and valuable insights into the anatomy and variation of the bone in Homo naledi. While ... Full text Cite

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

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · 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 Cite

Vertical support use and primate origins.

Journal Article Scientific reports · August 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 Cite

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

Journal Article PloS one · January 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 Cite

Morphometric panel regression equations for predicting body mass in immature humans.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · May 2018 ObjectivesPredicting body mass is a frequent objective of several anthropological subdisciplines, but there are few published methods for predicting body mass in immature humans. Because most reference samples are composed of adults, predicting bo ... Full text Open Access 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 Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 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 Cite

Accuracy of human-based morphometric equations for predicting bonobo body mass

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · April 1, 2018 Link to item Cite

Scaling relationships of axonic patterning in the hands and feet of primates

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · April 1, 2018 Link to item Cite

Group-wise Shape Correspondence of Variable and Complex Objects.

Conference Proceedings of SPIE--the International Society for Optical Engineering · 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 Cite

Evaluating morphometric body mass prediction equations with a juvenile human test sample: accuracy and applicability to small-bodied hominins.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · February 2018 Body mass is an ecologically and biomechanically important variable in the study of hominin biology. Regression equations derived from recent human samples allow for the reasonable prediction of body mass of later, more human-like, and generally larger hom ... Full text Open Access Cite

Alternative methods for calculating percentage prediction error and their implications for predicting body mass in fossil taxa.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · February 2018 Since body mass covaries with many ecological aspects of an animal, body mass prediction of fossil taxa is a frequent goal of paleontologists. Body mass prediction often relies on a body mass prediction equation (BMPE): a bivariate relationship between a p ... Full text Cite

Catarrhine hallucal metatarsals from the early Miocene site of Songhor, Kenya.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · July 2017 Songhor is an early Miocene fossil locality in Kenya known for its diverse primate assemblage that includes catarrhine species belonging to the genera Kalepithecus, Limnopithecus, Dendropithecus, Rangwapithecus, and Proconsul. Expeditions to Songhor since ... Full text Open Access 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 American journal of physical anthropology · June 2017 ObjectiveOn 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 lon ... Full text Open Access Cite

A critical comment on the ‘multiple variance Brownian motion’ model of Smaers et al. (2016)

Journal Article Biological Journal of the Linnean Society · May 1, 2017 Smaers, Mongle & Kandler (2016) (Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 118: 74-98) introduced a new phylogenetic comparative method, multiple-variance Brownian motion (mvBM), for reconstructing ancestral states given a phylogenetic tree and continuous ... Full text Open Access Cite

First virtual endocasts of adapiform primates.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · 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 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 Journal of human evolution · 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 Cite

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

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · July 2015 ObjectiveMultiple 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 ... Full text Open Access Cite

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

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · May 2015 ObjectivesComprehensive 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 emplo ... Full text Open Access Cite

First virtual endocasts of North American adapiform primates

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

Allometric shape change in the talar articular surfaces of euarchontans

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

Dental topography and dietary ecology of the first North American euprimates

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

Quantification of the position of the flexor fibularis groove of the euarchontan talus

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

A new fully automated approach for aligning and comparing shapes.

Journal Article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 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 Cite

The Independent Evolution Method Is Not a Viable Phylogenetic Comparative Method.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2015 Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) use data on species traits and phylogenetic relationships to shed light on evolutionary questions. Recently, Smaers and Vinicius suggested a new PCM, Independent Evolution (IE), which purportedly employs a novel mode ... Full text Open Access Cite

Quantification of talar medial tibial facet variation among primates

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2014 Link to item Cite

Talar articular surface curvature decreases allometrically among primates

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2014 Link to item Cite

Re-evaluation of promontorial arterial dominance in fossil adapiforms

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2014 Link to item Cite

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

Journal Article Journal of anatomy · 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 Cite

Hands of early primates.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · 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 Cite

Scaling patterns of talar articular surfaces within Euarchonta.

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · January 1, 2013 Link to item Cite