Dental Morphology and Diet in the Greater Antillean Platyrrhines

加勒比海猴子的化石和亚化石最初是在20世纪初收集的，但在华盛顿特区和纽约的博物馆抽屉里，它们作为身份不明的骨骼被隔离了几十年，直到科学家们意识到，有几个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，在几个岛屿上重新开展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有很长的进化历史。该项目将重点研究有牙科证据的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，以及一种代表新物种的未命名海地标本。随着大量的新大陆猴子和一些化石形式的比较样本，安的列斯灵长类动物的牙齿形态将被功能评估，以获得饮食信息。要做到这一点，首先将对所有牙列进行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，包括多变量分析和最近开发的几何形态计量学方法，这些方法旨在利用我们绘制表面解剖图的新能力进行三维绘制。此外，将对海地新物种进行系统描述，并与现有的安的列斯灵长类动物进行比较，以确定其在加勒比社区的系统发育地位、饮食适应和生态作用。该项目具有学术价值，可以将有关一组未被研究的灵长类动物的分类学和适应性多样性的知识添加到一个古人类学感兴趣的领域，该领域在过去20年中蓬勃发展，并已准备好根据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新化石证据进行新的古生物学合成。该项目还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学方法，以及用于分析灵长类牙齿的三维几何形态测量技术，用于功能和分类问题。这项研究也有更广泛的影响。它将是第一批在人类学中使用统计稳健的虚拟标本样本的机构之一，从而为传播用于科学和教育目的的高质量研究数字对象奠定基础。一旦研究完成，这项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协会(NYCEP)的网站向公众提供。

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.