The twentieth century is best characterized as the century in which primate diversity obtained a temporal dimension. One hundred years ago, the biogeography and diversity of living primates as we know it today were largely established. Undoubtedly, there have been some major discoveries since 1900, for example, bonobos and Callimico; however, of the 61 commonly recognized genera of living primates, 56 were described by 1900. In contrast, of the nearly 200 genera of fossil primates that have been discovered and named to date, barely 10% (23) were described before 1900 (Figs. 1–3). Clearly, the past century has been the Century of the Past. The study of primate evolution as we know it today is predominantly the product of the twentieth century. However, most scientific disciplines do not come into existence abruptly. Rather, they often tend to coalesce from a variety of sources only later to be recognized as a distinct area of study. In retrospect it is often possible to identify a few specific events or series of events that contributed disproportionately to the development of a modern area of study as we understand it today. For primate evolution, three times stand out as defining periods prior to 1900. The first of these is the 1735 publication of Linneas’ Systema Naturae, when he classified humans in the same taxonomic group with other primates in his Anthropomorpha (which subsequently became Primates). This taxonomic placement established the context for the study of primates in understanding humans. The second defining period for the study of primate evolution came in the 1830s when primates were recovered for the first time from fossil deposits containing extinct species. Within a few years, Baker and Durand (1836)1 and Cautley and Falconer (1838)2 reported fossil monkey remains from northern India; the Danish Paleontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund3 recovered and named a new species of fossil monkey from cave deposits in Brazil; and Blainville and Lartet4 described recovery of a small ape similar to the living gibbon from Europe. In a pre-evolutionary framework, this provided the first evidence that 1) nonhuman primates (and by implication, perhaps humans) were present in time periods prior to the present; 2) there were primate species from the fossil record that are not known to be alive today; and 3) apes once lived in Europe (reviewed in Fleagle and Hartwig5). It is interesting and probably not coincidental that Hugh Falconer, who described one of the first fossil primates, went on to play a major role in documenting human antiquity 20 years later in Europe.6 The third of these defining periods is that between 1859 and 1871, marked by the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and The Descent of John Fleagle is professor of Anatomical Sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the Editor of Evolutionary Anthropology, the author of Primate Adaptation and Evolution (1999) and co-editor (with C.H. Janson and K.E. Reed) of Primate Communities (1999). E-mail: jfleagle@mail.som.sunysb.edu
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Jan 1, 2023
Martin Pickford + 2
Open Access
