Dental Morphology and Diet in the Greater Antillean Platyrrhines

大安的列斯鸭嘴兽的牙齿形态和饮食

• 批准号: 0726134
• 负责人: Alfred Rosenberger
• 金额: $ 1.23万
• 依托单位: CUNY Brooklyn College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-08-01 至 2009-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0726134&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dental; Morphology; Diet; Greater; Antillean

Fossil and subfossil Caribbean monkeys were first collected in the early 1900s, but remained sequestered as unidentified bones in museum drawers in Washington, D.C. and New York for decades before scientists realized several specimens represented unknown recently extinct New World monkeys. During the 1980s and 1990s, renewed collecting efforts on several of the islands revealed more evidence, and now it is clear that primates, like many other vertebrates, have had a long evolutionary history on Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola. This project will focus on the dental morphology and diet of the three named primates (Antillothrix bernensis, Paralouatta varonai, and Xenothrix mcgregori), for which there is dental evidence, and one unnamed Haitian specimen, which represents a new species. Along with a large comparative sample of living New World monkeys and a few fossil forms, the dental morphology of the Antillean primates will be evaluated functionally for dietary information. To accomplish this, all dentitions will first be laser scanned to create three-dimensional models, which will then be analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques, including multivariate analysis and recently developed geometric morphometric methods designed to exploit our new capacity to map surface anatomy three-dimensionally. In addition, the new Haitian species will be systematically described and compared to existing Antillean primates to ascertain its phylogenetic position, dietary adaptation, and ecological role in the Caribbean community. This project has intellectual merit in adding knowledge concerning the taxonomic and adaptive diversity of an understudied group of primates to an area of paleoanthropological interest that has burgeoned during the past two decades and is ready for new paleobiological syntheses based on an impressive new accumulation of fossil evidence stretching from Argentina to Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and the Caribbean. This project will also be one of the first to employ a new suite of methods including high resolution laser scanning for measurement, computer graphics methods for visualization, and three-dimensional geometric morphometric techniques for the analysis of primate dentitions, for both functional and taxonomic questions. This study has broader impacts, too. It will be one of the first to employ statistically robust samples of virtual specimens in anthropology, thus laying the groundwork for disseminating research quality digital objects for scientific and educational purposes. All of the laser scans used in this study will be made available immediately to the general public via the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology (NYCEP) website once the study is completed.

加勒比猴的化石和亚化石首次在 1900 年代初被收集，但在华盛顿特区和纽约的博物馆抽屉里作为身份不明的骨头被隔离了几十年，直到科学家们意识到几个标本代表了最近灭绝的未​​知新世界猴。 在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代，对几个岛屿重新进行的收集工作揭示了更多证据，现在很明显，灵长类动物和许多其他脊椎动物一样，在古巴、牙买加和伊斯帕尼奥拉岛上有着悠久的进化历史。 该项目将重点研究三种已命名灵长类动物（Antillothrix bernensis、Paralouatta varonai 和 Xenothrix mcgregori）的牙齿形态和饮食（有牙齿证据），以及一个未命名的海地标本（代表一个新物种）。 除了大量活体新世界猴和一些化石形式的比较样本外，还将对安的列斯灵长类动物的牙齿形态进行功能评估，以获取饮食信息。 为了实现这一目标，所有牙列将首先被激光扫描以创建三维模型，然后使用各种统计技术进行分析，包括多元分析和最近开发的几何形态测量方法，旨在利用我们三维绘制表面解剖结构的新能力。 此外，还将系统地描述新的海地物种，并将其与现有的安的列斯灵长类动物进行比较，以确定其系统发育位置、饮食适应和在加勒比社区中的生态作用。该项目具有智力价值，它将有关灵长类动物分类学和适应性多样性的知识添加到过去二十年蓬勃发展的古人类学兴趣领域，并为基于从阿根廷到玻利维亚、巴西、哥伦比亚和加勒比地区的令人印象深刻的化石证据新积累的新古生物学综合做好了准备。 该项目也将是首批采用一套新方法的项目之一，包括用于测量的高分辨率激光扫描、用于可视化的计算机图形方法以及用于分析灵长类齿列的三维几何形态测量技术，以解决功能和分类学问题。 这项研究也具有更广泛的影响。 它将是第一个在人类学中使用统计上可靠的虚拟标本样本的国家之一，从而为传播用于科学和教育目的的研究质量数字对象奠定了基础。 研究完成后，本研究中使用的所有激光扫描将立即通过纽约进化灵长类动物学联盟 (NYCEP) 网站向公众开放。