Paleontological Field Work and Research on Eocene Anthropoids and other Primates from the People

现存的类人猿或“高等”灵长类动物包括猴子、猿和人类。来自分子生物学、比较解剖学和古生物学领域的各种证据表明，高等灵长类动物是一个共同祖先的后代，而且高等灵长类动物谱系很早就在新生代与其他灵长类动物（包括现存狐猴和眼镜猴的祖先）分道扬镳。然而，类人猿进化早期阶段的化石记录极其贫乏。因此，我们不知道最早的类人猿生活在什么时候，类人猿谱系起源于哪里，类人猿在灵长类动物进化树上的位置如何，我们也不了解它们古生物学的许多方面。该项目旨在通过在中国始新世（距今5500 - 3400万年前）遗址恢复新的灵长类动物化石，填补我们对灵长类动物和人类进化知识的最大空白。对这些化石的实验室研究将为从原始的、类似原猿的灵长类动物到更高级的类人猿的关键进化转变提供新的信息。几个新的早期类人猿分类群将被描述，他们的牙齿和骨骼的功能分析将揭示他们的古生物学，包括他们的饮食偏好和运动方式。

Living anthropoid or 'higher' primates include monkeys, apes and humans. Diverse lines of evidence from the fields of molecular biology, comparative anatomy, and paleontology demonstrate that higher primates are descendants of a single common ancestor, and that the higher primate lineage diverged from other primates (including the ancestors of living lemurs and tarsiers) very early in the Cenozoic Era. However, the fossil record of the early phases of anthropoid evolution is extremely poor. As a result, we do not know precisely when the earliest anthropoids lived, where the anthropoid lineage originated, how anthropoids fit on the evolutionary tree of primates, nor do we understand numerous aspects of their paleobiology. This project aims to fill this largest remaining gap in our knowledge of primate and human evolution by recovering new fossil primates from Eocene (55-34 million year old) sites in China. Laboratory studies of these fossils will provide new information on the critical evolutionary transition from primitive, prosimian-like primates to more advanced anthropoids. Several new taxa of early anthropoids will be described, and functional analyses of their teeth and skeletons will reveal a great deal about their paleobiology, including their dietary preferences and mode of locomotion.