Primate Adaptation and Evolution, Fourth Edition provides key features of extant families and references to more detailed texts. The book sets the scene and creates space for a thorough updating of exciting developments in primate paleontology and a reconstruction through early hominid species of our own human origins. This updated version covers recent developments in primate paleontology, the latest taxonomy, and includes new visuals, including helpful illustrations and evolutionary trees. It is an ideal text for undergraduate and post-graduate students studying the evolution and functional ecology of primates and early fossil hominids.The book retains its grounding in the extant primate groups as the best way to understand the fossil trail and evolution of these modern forms. However, this coverage is now more streamlined, referring to the many new and excellent books on living primate ecology and adaptation - a field that has burgeoned since this book's first publication.
Table of Contents
1. Adaptation, Evolution, and Systematics2. The Primate Body
3. Primate Lives
4. The Prosimians Lemurs, Lorises, Galagos, and Tarsiers
5. New World Anthropoids
6. Old World Monkeys
7. Apes and Humans
8. Primate Communities and Biogeography
9. Primate Adaptation
10. The Fossil Record
11. Primate Origins
12. Fossil Prosimians
13. Early Anthropoids
14. Fossil Platyrrhines
15. Primate Catarrhines and Fossil Apes
16. Fossil Old World Monkeys
17. Fossil Hominins Bipedal Primates
18. Patterns in Primate Evolution
