DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Constraints on Primate Craniofacial Growth and Form

哺乳动物的头骨是一个由重叠的单元组成的综合体，这些单元涉及呼吸、视觉、听觉、嗅觉和吞咽等多种功能。因此，头骨中的大多数形态特征往往是相当相互关联的，限制了变化。然而，非独立的颅骨特征对于重建进化关系是有问题的，因为它们主观地偏向于将最接近的物种分组。本研究使用灵长类头骨的CAT扫描和X光照片来测试关于灵长类动物大脑，颅底和面部之间相互关系的几个假设，以具体评估头骨特征重建灵长类动物和人类祖先进化关系的实用性。单变量，双变量和多变量技术，包括缩放和矩阵分析，将被用来测试模式的约束和集成之间的头骨字符在70灵长类动物物种和10种猴子和猿的生长样本。初步结果表明，限制，导致整合，而罕见的，在很大程度上影响灵长类动物的头骨形状的变化，并应考虑到测试灵长类动物和人类进化的系统发育假说时。

The mammalian skull is an integrated complex of overlapping units that are involved in multiple functions such as breathing, vision, hearing, smelling and swallowing. Therefore most morphological features in the skull tend to be considerably inter-correlated, limiting variation. Non-independent cranial features, however, are problematic for reconstructing evolutionary relationships, because they subjectively bias efforts to group most-closely related species. This study uses CAT scans and radiographs of primate skulls to test several hypotheses about interrelationships between the brain, cranial base and face in primates, in order to assess specifically the utility of skull characters for reconstructing evolutionary relationships in primates and human ancestors. Univariate, bivariate and multivariate techniques, including scaling and matrix analyses, will be used to test patterns of constraint and integration among skull characters in 70 primate species and growth samples of 10 species of monkeys and apes. Preliminary results suggest that constraints which result from integration, while rare, considerably affect variations in primate skull form and should be taken into account when testing phylogenetic hypotheses about primate and human evolution.