Primate Origins and Evolution

List of tables ix.- Preface xi.- 1 A survey of living primates.- The living primates.- 2 The primate fossil record.- Chance and bias in fossilization.- The timescale and phylogenetic relationships.- The plesiadapiform group ('archaic primates').- Early Tertiary 'lemuroids'.- Miocene 'lorisoids'.- Subfossil lemurs of Madagascar.- Early Tertiary 'tarsioids'.- Oligocene Fayum simians.- Oligocene/Miocene New World monkeys.- Miocene/Pliocene Old World monkeys.- Miocene small apes.- Miocene/Pliocene large apes.- Pliocene/Pleistocene fossil hominids.- 3 Classification and phylogenetic reconstruction.- The distinctiveness of classification.- The phylogenetic scale.- Speciation and phylogenetic change.- Analysis of characters for phylogenetic reconstruction.- Phylogenetic tree-building.- 4 Adaptive radiation of mammals.- Distinctions between living mammals and reptiles.- The fossil record of mammalian origins.- Continental drift and mammalian evolution.- Appendix: The importance of body size.- Scaling of energy requirements.- 5 Are tree-shrews primates?.- Living tree-shrews.- Tree-shrews and squirrels.- Tree-shrews as insectivores or primates.- Definition of the order Primates.- Tree-shrews as primitive mammals.- Fossil insectivores.- Fossil tree-shrews.- 6 Primate diets and dentitions.- Diets.- The digestive tract.- Dental patterns.- Development of primate dentitions.- Function of primate dentitions.- Human dentition and diet.- 7 The skull and major sense organs.- The eyes and the orbits.- The nasal cavity and the sense of smell.- The ear region.- The combined evidence of the sense organs.- 8 Evolution of the primate central nervous system.- Basic structure of the mammalian brain.- Relative brain size in primates.- External morphology of the primate brain.- Internal organization of the primate brain.- Evolution of the spinal cord in primates.- Development of the primate brain.- Human brain development: a special case.- 9 Primate reproductive biology.- The reproductive organs.- The female cycle and seasonality of breeding.- Conception, gestation and birth.- Postnatal development and parental care.- Reproductive strategies.- 10 Primate locomotor patterns.- Classification of primate locomotion.- Locomotor morphology.- Body size and locomotor adaptation.- Limb proportions.- The extremities.- Ankle and wrist joints.- Hindlimb-dominated locomotion.- Arboreal or terrestrial ancestry of mammals?.- Origins of human bipedalism.- 11 Evidence from chromosomes and proteins.- Chromosomal evolution.- Genetic evolution.- 12 A provisional synthesis.- Definition of the order Primates.- The major issues.- Are tree-shrews primates?.- Are plesiadapiforms primates?.- Reconstruction of the ancestral primate.- Is the division between strepsirhines and haplorhines valid?.- Are the Malagasy lemurs monophyletic?.- Are the simians monophyletic?.- Are the marmosets and tamarins primitive or specialized?.- 'Apes' and 'monkeys' among the Old World simians.- A timescale for primate evolution.- Implications for primate classification.- References.- Author index.- Taxonomic index.