Abstract

Daniel. L. Gebo 2014. Primate comparative anatomy. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, xii+190 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-1489-8, price (hardbound), $84.95. For the last 25 years, I have been teaching an advanced undergraduate course emphasizing the comparative functional morphology of the musculoskeletal system in living primates. There are very limited options for textbooks that cover this topic broadly and at a level accessible to undergraduates (e.g., Aiello and Dean 1990; Whitehead et al. 2005; Ankel-Simons 2007; Fleagle 2013). As a result, I have awkwardly pieced together readings from various sources over the years; so I was very excited to see this new book published by Daniel Gebo. I usually assign portions of his edited volume, Postcranial Adaptation in Nonhuman Primates (Gebo 1993) in my class, but have often felt that some of the chapters were too detailed even for the advanced undergraduate. As Gebo notes in the preface of Primate Comparative Anatomy , he has tried to simplify the material, and the intended audience is undergraduates and early graduate students. Understandably, the book does not attempt to cover all aspects of primate anatomy, but focuses on the skeletal system, with some attention to soft tissues such as muscles, brains, eyes, reproductive anatomy, and the digestive tract. The emphasis on the skeletal system fits well with the books’ evolutionary approach and intermittent examples of the anatomy of fossil primates. Chapter 1 provides a nice overview of primate phylogeny and adaptation, including a short but informative … — Liza Shapiro, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, 2201 Speedway, Stop 3200, Austin, TX 78712, USA; e-mail: liza.shapiro{at}austin.utexas.edu.

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