Function, Phylogeny, and Fossils Miocene Hominoid Evolution and Adap
An insightful new work, Function, Phylogeny, and Fossils integrates two practices in paleobiology which are often separated - functional and phylogenetic analysis. The book summarizes the evidence on paleoenvironments at the most important Miocene hominoi
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ADVANCES IN PRIMATO LOGY Series Editors: JOHN G. FLEAGLE State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, New York R. D. E. MAcPHEE American Museum of Natural History New York, New York
Editorial Board: JOHN M. ALLMAN, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California RUSSELL L. CIOCHON, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa FRANo
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Fig. 1. Proposed phylogenetic positions of "proconsulids": (a) related exclusively to living genera, (b) stem great apes, (c) stem hominoids, and (d) stem catarrhines.
to be lacking in undoubted fossil hominoids such as Sivapithecus (Pilbeam et al., 1990) and Kenyapithecus (Benefit and McCrossin, personal communication). These revelations have led some workers to doubt the homology of the forelimb morphology of living apes, despite the functional similarity (Larson, 1992). This, in turn, underscores the importance of examining other anatomical systems of "proconsulids" for possible synapomorphic resemblances with
extant catarrhines. To address this controversy, a series of facial characteristics was examined in "proconsulids," a sample of extant catarrhine taxa, and an outgroup consisting of extant platyrrhines and fossil stem catarrhine species. These characters were subjected to parsimony analysis and the results compared with published hypotheses of proconsulid phylogenetic position. In this way, the phylogenetic pattern indicated by an independent character set from a different anatomical system was used as a critical test of the alternative hypotheses outlined above (Fig. 1). The resulting pattern of hominoid facial evolution also presents some interesting implications for the functional interpretation of evolving character states and the analysis of "functional complexes."
Materials The "proconsulid" taxa analyzed (see Table I) are from sites in east Africa. These sites are primarily associated with extinct volcanic centers (Bishop, 1963; Pickford, 1986) and have been dated to between 20 and 17 Ma (Bishop
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et al., 1969; McDougall and Watkins, 1985; Drake et al., 1988; Boschetto et al., 1992). Unless otherwise indicated, character states were determined by examination of original specimens. Miocene taxa from the Middle East and Asia that have been considered closely related to the "proconsulids," including Afropithecus ("Heliopithecus") (Andrews and Martin, 1987), Dionysopithecus (Li, 1978), and Platydontopithecus (Gu and Lin, 1983), are too incomplete for the present analysis, as is the possibly distinct African genus "Xenopithecus" (Hopwood, 1933; Madden, 1980). In addition to "proconsulids," two other fossil catarrhine species were examined: Pliopithecus vindobonensis from the middle Miocene of Europe and Aegyptopithecus zeuxis from the Oligocene of the Fayum, Egypt. These taxa were used as successive outgroups in the analysis of the fossil material (see Methods below). Several extant anthropoid taxa were also analyzed (Table I) to provide an evolutionary framework within w
