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.

加勒比海猴子的化石和亚化石最早是在20世纪初被收集到的，但在华盛顿特区和纽约的博物馆抽屉里被当作身份不明的骨头隔离了几十年，直到科学家们意识到一些标本代表了最近灭绝的未知新大陆猴子。在20世纪80年代和90年代，对几个岛屿的重新收集工作揭示了更多的证据，现在很清楚，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有很长的进化历史。该项目将重点研究三种已命名的灵长类动物（Antillothrix bernensis， parouatta varonai和Xenothrix mcgregori）的牙齿形态和饮食，它们有牙齿证据，还有一种未命名的海地标本，它代表了一个新物种。与大量的新世界现存猴子的比较样本和一些化石形式一起，安的列斯灵长类动物的牙齿形态将被评估为饮食信息的功能。为了实现这一目标，所有牙列首先将被激光扫描以创建三维模型，然后将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，旨在利用我们的新能力来绘制三维表面解剖结构。此外，新的海地物种将被系统地描述，并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的生态作用。这个项目具有智力上的价值，它为过去二十年来蓬勃发展的古人类学兴趣领域增加了关于灵长类动物群体的分类和适应性多样性的知识，并准备好在从阿根廷到玻利维亚、巴西、哥伦比亚和加勒比地区令人印象深刻的化石证据的新积累的基础上进行新的古生物学综合。该项目也将是第一个采用一系列新方法的项目之一，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学方法，以及用于分析灵长类动物牙列的三维几何形态测量技术，以解决功能和分类问题。这项研究也有更广泛的影响。这将是第一个在人类学中使用统计上可靠的虚拟标本样本，从而为科学和教育目的传播研究质量的数字对象奠定基础。一旦这项研究完成，所有在这项研究中使用的激光扫描将通过纽约进化灵长类协会（NYCEP）的网站立即向公众开放。