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.

加勒比海猴的化石和亚化石最早是在20世纪初被收集起来的，但在科学家意识到几个标本代表了未知的最近灭绝的新世界猴之前，它们作为身份不明的骨头被隔离在华盛顿，华盛顿特区和纽约的博物馆抽屉里几十年。 在20世纪80年代和90年代，在几个岛屿上重新进行的收集工作揭示了更多的证据，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。 该项目将侧重于牙齿形态和饮食的三个命名的灵长类动物（Antillothrix bernensis，Paralouatta varonai和Xenothrix mcgregori），其中有牙齿的证据，以及一个未命名的海地标本，这代表了一个新物种。 沿着大量新大陆现存猴的比较样本和一些化石形式，将对安的列斯群岛灵长类动物的牙齿形态进行功能性评估，以获取饮食信息。 为了实现这一目标，所有的牙列将首先进行激光扫描，以创建三维模型，然后将使用各种统计技术进行分析，包括多变量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，映射表面解剖三维。 此外，新的海地物种将系统地描述和现有的安的列斯群岛灵长类动物进行比较，以确定其系统发育的位置，饮食适应，在加勒比共同体的生态作用。该项目的智力价值在于为过去20年来迅速发展起来的古人类学领域增加了关于未得到充分研究的灵长类动物群体的分类学和适应多样性的知识，并准备根据从阿根廷到玻利维亚、巴西、哥伦比亚和加勒比的令人印象深刻的新的化石证据积累进行新的古生物学综合。 这个项目也将是第一个采用一套新的方法，包括高分辨率激光扫描测量，计算机图形方法可视化，和三维几何形态测量技术的灵长类动物齿系的分析，为功能和分类问题。 这项研究也有更广泛的影响。 它将是第一个在人类学中采用统计学上可靠的虚拟标本样本的项目之一，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基础。 一旦研究完成，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）网站向公众提供。