The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans

Notes

Notes 1. MISSING LINKS AND DAWN MONKEYS 1. As in many modern ecosystems, small muroid rodents are particularly abundant at many middle Eocene and younger fossil localities in China (Dawson and Tong 1998). 2. There is a great deal of literature on this subject. Among the more important primary references in recent years are White et al. 1994, M. G. Leakey et al. 1995, Haile-Selassie 2001, and Brunet et al. 2002. 3. Wilf and Labandeira 1999 and Wilf 2000 provide excellent empirical studies of the coevolution of plants and insects during this time in western North America, where the fossil record is exceptionally good. 4. Niemitz 1984a, 65, reports: “Under semiwild conditions this small swift flying bird [Ceyx erithacus rufidorsus, the forest kingfisher], which is very common in that area, was caught in the air, flying past the Bornean tarsier. The tarsier caught it like the goal keeper of a soccer game catches the ball with both hands in midleap. Both animals fell to the ground, where the tarsier killed the bird with a fast sequence of bites into the neck region.” 5. Stephan 1984, 330. 6. Pollock and Mullin 1987. 7. Schmitz et al. 2001. 8. Beard 1998. 9. Despite its name, Afrotarsius chatrathi from the Fayum region of Egypt is more likely to be a very primitive species of African anthropoid than a fossil tarsier (Beard 1998). 295 10. Darwin 1874, 171. 11. Pilgrim 1927, 15. 12. B. Brown 1925 and esp. L. Brown 1950 provide engaging firsthand accounts of the Browns’ 1923 expedition to Myanmar. 13. Colbert 1937. 14. Tsubamoto et al. 2002. 15. The significant role that these Burmese Eocene primates continued to play in the debate regarding anthropoid origins is shown by the fact that the new discoveries were published in Nature and Science, despite the fragmentary condition of the new fossils (Ba Maw et al., 1979; Ciochon et al., 1985). 16. Analysis of what was then known regarding the paleogeography and paleobiogeography of Africa during the early Cenozoic led P. A. Holroyd and M. C. Maas 1994 to support an endemic African origin for anthropoids. In the same edited volume, R. L. Ciochon, previously a strong proponent of the view that Burmese Pondaungia and Amphipithecus were the world’s oldest anthropoids, changed his mind and argued instead that Pondaungia was related to North American notharctids (a well-known group of lemurlike adapiform primates from the Eocene), while the evolutionary position of Amphipithecus was left up in the air (Ciochon and Holroyd 1994). 17. Beard et al. 1994. 18. In a growing list of fossils relevant to this issue, those described by Ji et al. 1998, 2001, are among the most significant. 19. Le Gros Clark 1960, 349. 20. D. T. Rasmussen 1994, fig. 7, sketched out one of the most explicit recent attempts to tie anthropoids in a simple ancestor-descendant sequence with earlier prosimians. His ladderlike phylogeny derives anthropoids directly from lemurlike adapiform primates, while relegating tarsiers to a distant side branch of the primate family tree, thus disagreeing with Le Gros Clark’s original version of the ladder. 21. This philosophical link between a relatively recent time of origin for anthropoids and their direct derivation from fossil prosimians is nicely illustrated by the following quotation from Rasmussen and Simons 1992, 503: “We predict that as more is learned about Old World primate faunas during the latest Eocene, more ‘protoanthropoid’ prosimians and prosimian-like anthropoids will be discovered, which will not be easily and unambiguously classified into either suborder.” 22. The many problems involved in proposing direct ancestor-descendant relationships in the fossil record are explored in much greater detail by Gee 1999. 2. TOWARD EGYPT’S SACRED BULL 1. Thomas Jefferson’s statement here dates from 1781–82 (Simpson 1942, 150). 2. An English translation of Cuvier’s original paper on the subject, which was read at the public session of the French Institut National on April 4, 1796, is provided by Rudwick 1997, 18–24. 296 NOTES TO PAGES 15—32 3. English translation in Rudwick 1997, 52, of an address given by Cuvier on November 17, 1800. 4. Rudwick 1997, 260–61. 5. An English translation of Cuvier’s original paper is provided by Rudwick 1997, 69–73. 6. Delfortrie 1873; Filhol 1874. 7. Beard et al. 1988. 8. Godinot 1998, table 1. 9. Although there are valid scientific reasons for...