Early Anthropoid Evolution in South America

人类学家倾向于忽视新大陆猴子，因为它们不在与人类关系的主线上。然而，它们构成了一个令人兴奋的分支，为人类学家提供了与犀牛化石记录中发生的变化类似的例子。与东半球其他主要的高等灵长类动物相比，新大陆猴的历史仍然鲜为人知，相对不同的platyrrhine化石群之间的系统发育关系在很大程度上没有得到解决。直到最近，platyrrhines的全部化石记录中只有不到30具个体的遗骸。在过去的四年里，在哥伦比亚和阿根廷的古生物学研究已经发现了大量的新化石，这些化石可能对理清这些关系非常重要。对阿根廷新化石的进一步系统和功能研究将有助于澄清现代长颈犀牛之间的关系，并提供有关其适应多样性的额外文件。来自阿根廷的化石来自两个大致相同的地层，圣克鲁斯和平图拉，但这两个地层有不同种类的猴子。该项目将调查这些形态差异在多大程度上是两个地层在时间、环境和/或地理位置上的差异造成的，并将重建这些地层的古环境。该项目将有助于我们了解新世界灵长类动物的系统发育和多样化，并允许对南美洲和其他大陆的灵长类动物进行更广泛的比较。

Anthropologists tend to overlook the New World monkeys because they are not on the main line of relationship to humans. Nevertheless, they comprise an exciting side branch which provides anthropologists with examples parallel to changes which have taken place in the catarrhine fossil record. The history of New World monkeys is still poorly known, compared with that of other major radiations of higher primates in the eastern hemisphere, and phylogenetic relationships among the relatively distinct groups of platyrrhine fossils are largely unresolved. Until very recently, the entire fossil record for platyrrhines consisted of remains of fewer than thirty individuals. During the past four years, paleontological research in Colombia and Argentina has yielded an abundance of new fossils that may be very important in sorting out these relationships. Further systematic and functional studies of new Argentine fossils will help clarify relationships among modern platyrrhines, and provide additional documentation about their adaptive diversity. The fossils from Argentina have come from two roughly contemporaneous formations, the Santa Cruz and the Pinturas, yet the two formations have different species of monkeys. This project will investigate the extent to which these morphological differences are the result of differences in time, environment, and/or geographical position of the two formations, and the PI will reconstruct the paleoenvironments of these formations. The project will contribute to our understanding of the phylogeny and diversification of New World primates, and permit broader comparisons between those in South America and those on other continents.