Anthropoid Origins Symposium (New)

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award will underwrite a symposium organized to bring together scientists with divergent opinions on questions surrounding the origins of anthropoids, the group of primates including monkeys, apes and humans. The participants will address such questions as: How are anthropoids related to other primates? Where and when did the group originate? What functional and adaptive innovations characterize anthropoids today? What is the adaptive significance and evolutionary history of these innovations? This is an exciting time for those interested in deepening our knowledge of primate evolution. Newly recovered middle and late Eocene primates from Asia and Africa have been variously interpreted as supporting competing hypotheses regarding anthropoid relationships and biogeographic origins. Equally divergent views exist concerning the antiquity of the major groups of living anthropoids-catarrhines and platyrrhines (Old World and New World Monkeys). There is an improved understanding of function and adaptation in the visual system, brain, and feeding apparatus, key anatomical systems where distinctive anthropoid features are concentrated. New methods for estimating visual acuity and activity patterns in fossil primates are providing insights into the evolution of the visual system. The rapid accumulation of information on color vision in primates, including new genetic evidence of possible trichromacy in strepsirrhines, and new behavioral data on the benefits of color vision, makes this an exciting time to evaluate the role of chromatic perception in anthropoid evolution. Research into the primate visual system by neuroscientists has generated a plethora of important data in recent years, making this an ideal time to bring these researchers together with anthropologists. Primate behaviorists and ecologists are developing new models to explain the origins of group living in primates and anthropoids provide an excellent test of these ideas. The fossil record of early anthropoids allows testing of these models, revealing novel trait combinations that can provide critical falsification of these models and suggest the sequence in which current trait associations have evolved. Molecular approaches continue to aid in clarifying our understanding of the timing and tempo of evolutionary change. The objective is to bring together some of the key researchers in these fields to discuss their views, to enhance intellectual exchanges among paleontologists and neontologists who study the visual and masticatory systems, molecular systematics, and phylogenetic analysis as applied to the study of adaptation.