A complete skeleton of a large-bodied New World monkey has been found in Pleistocene cave deposits in the Brazilian state of Bahia. It demonstrates an unprecedented combination of body size, locomotor and cranial morphology. Skeletal features indicate an animal of approximately 25 kg, more than twice the mass of any living South American monkey. We refer the specimen to Protopithecus brasiliensis Lund, 1838, a large Pleistocene primate originally represented by only a proximal femur and distal humerus. The skeleton resembles species of two distinct New World monkey lineages. The cranium is modified for an enlarged vocal sac typical of living howler monkeys, and the postcranium includes suspensory and brachiating components of locomotion as seen in living spider and woolly spider monkeys. This skeleton confirms that adaptive diversity in neotropical primates was greater in the recent past, and that current interpretations of how their distinctive adaptations evolved should be revised.
Gestation length, neonatal and maternal body weight, and neonatal and adult brain weight data were collected for New World monkeys in an attempt to establish typical patterns of perinatal life history. This study attempts to illuminate the most accurate values from the available data, which suggest that gestation length and prenatal growth rate are broadly conserved in relation to maternal size in New World monkeys. Exceptions to the patterns evident in the data point to derivations in life history strategies. In particular, this study suggests that the extended gestation length of callitrichines is a function of minimum viable neonate size and not exclusively energy minimization associated with simultaneous lactation. Cebus is shown to undergo more postnatal brain growth relative to other New World monkeys, but not as much as previously believed. Alouatta is shown to be relatively small brained at birth as well as in adulthood. Saimiri is shown to present the most unusual package of perinatal life history traits, in which precocial neonates are gestated for a relatively long time and at a slightly faster growth rate than is typical for New World monkeys. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A nearly complete skeleton of a robustbodied New World monkey that resembles living spider monkeys was recovered from undisturbed Pleistocene deposits in the Brazilian state of Bahia. The skeleton displays the highly specialized postcranial pattern typical of spider and woolly spider monkeys and shares cranial similarities to the spider monkey exclusively. It is generically distinct on the basis of its robustness (>20 kg) and on the shape of its braincase. This
The dynamics of brain evolution in New World monkeys are poorly understood. New data on brain weight and body weight from 162 necropsied adult individuals, and a second series on body weight and gut size from 59 individuals, are compared with previously published reports based on smaller samples as well as large databases derived from museum records. We confirm elevated brain sizes for Cebus and Saimiri and also report that Cacajao and Chiropotes have relatively large brains. From more limited data we show that gut size and brain mass have a strongly inverse relationship at the low end of the relative brain size scale but a more diffuse interaction at the upper end, where platyrrhines with relatively high encephalization quotients may have either relatively undifferentiated guts or similar within-gut proportions to low-EQ species. Three of the four main platyrrhine clades exhibit a wide range of relative brain sizes, suggesting each may have differentiated while brains were relatively small and a multiplicity of forces acting to maintain or drive encephalization. Alouatta is a likely candidate for de-encephalization, although its ''starting point'' is difficult to establish. Factors that may have compelled parallel evolution of relatively large brains in cebids, atelids and pitheciids may involve large social group sizes as well as complex foraging strategies, with both aspects exaggerated in the hyper-encephalized Cebus. With diet playing an important role selecting for digestive strategies among the seed-eating pitheciins, comparable in ways to folivores, Chiropotes evolved a relatively larger brain in conjunction with a moderately large and differentiated gut. Anat Rec, 294:2207Rec, 294: -2221Rec, 294: , 2011. V V C 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Key words: New World monkeys; platyrrhines; brain size; gut size; diet; sociality; Expensive Tissue HypothesisThe relationship between brain size and body size continues to tempt and vex attempts to identify the role of cognition in primate evolution. Are simple measures of absolute brain size more informative than indices anchored to body size, phylogeny, or allometry (Marino, 2006;Deaner et al., 2007). What constitutes a reliable data set (Isler et al., 2008), and who are the arbiters of that reliability (e
A previously unidentified middle Miocene primate from the La Venta deposits of Colombia is intermediate between squirrel monkeys (Saimin) and callitrichines (marmosets and tamarins) in the morphology of the lower molars, mandible, and talus. Laventiana annectens is closely related to Saimiri and to Cebus (capuchin monkeys) yet resembles the probable callitrichine morphotype, demonstrating that archaic relatives of a Saimiri-like stock were suitable structural ancestors for the enigmatic callitrichines. Laveniana is also more primitive than Saimir (= Neosaimin) fieldsi from the same fauna, further increasing the likelihood that the latter is a lineal ancestor of modern squirrel monkeys.
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