Department of Anthropology and Center for Quantitative Imaging, EMS Energy Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Proc Biol Sci. 2012 Sep 7;279(1742):3467-75. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.0939. Epub 2012 Jun 13.
Our understanding of locomotor evolution in anthropoid primates has been limited to those taxa for which good postcranial fossil material and appropriate modern analogues are available. We report the results of an analysis of semicircular canal size variation in 16 fossil anthropoid species dating from the Late Eocene to the Late Miocene, and use these data to reconstruct evolutionary changes in locomotor adaptations in anthropoid primates over the last 35 Ma. Phylogenetically informed regression analyses of semicircular canal size reveal three important aspects of anthropoid locomotor evolution: (i) the earliest anthropoid primates engaged in relatively slow locomotor behaviours, suggesting that this was the basal anthropoid pattern; (ii) platyrrhines from the Miocene of South America were relatively agile compared with earlier anthropoids; and (iii) while the last common ancestor of cercopithecoids and hominoids likely was relatively slow like earlier stem catarrhines, the results suggest that the basal crown catarrhine may have been a relatively agile animal. The latter scenario would indicate that hominoids of the later Miocene secondarily derived their relatively slow locomotor repertoires.
我们对人科灵长类动物运动方式进化的了解仅限于那些具有良好的后肢化石材料和适当的现代类似物的分类群。我们报告了对 16 种来自渐新世晚期到中新世晚期的化石人科物种的半规管大小变化的分析结果，并利用这些数据重建了过去 3500 万年中，人科灵长类动物在运动适应方面的进化变化。对半规管大小的系统发育信息回归分析揭示了人科运动进化的三个重要方面：（i）最早的人科灵长类动物从事相对缓慢的运动行为，这表明这是基本的人科模式；（ii）来自南美洲中新世的阔鼻猴类与早期的人科动物相比相对敏捷；（iii）虽然小猿类和人科的最后共同祖先可能与早期的原猴类一样相对缓慢，但结果表明，基本的现生人科可能是一种相对敏捷的动物。后一种情况表明，中新世晚期的人科动物的相对缓慢的运动方式是次生的。
