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Gorillas are one of our closest living relatives, are the largest living primate, yet are perhaps the most misunderstood great ape. Teetering on the brink of extinction, they are also of increasing conservation concern. Gorilla Biology is the first comparative perspective on gorilla populations throughout their range.
Neanderthals and Modern Humans develops the theme of the close relationship between climate change, ecological change and biogeographical patterns in humans during the Pleistocene. In particular, it challenges the view that Modern Human 'superiority' caused the extinction of the Neanderthals between 40 and 30 thousand years ago. Clive Finlayson shows that to understand human evolution, the spread of humankind across the world and the extinction of archaic populations, we must move away from a purely theoretical evolutionary ecology base and realise the importance of wider biogeographic patterns including the role of tropical and temperate refugia. His proposal is that Neanderthals became extinct because their world changed faster than they could cope with, and that their relationship with the arriving Modern Humans, where they met, was subtle.
It is generally accepted that the earliest human ancestors grew more like apes than like humans today. If they did so, and we are now different, when, how and why did our modern growth patterns evolve? This book focuses on species within the genus Homo to investigate the evolutionary origins of characteristic human patterns and rates of craniofacial and postcranial growth and development, and to explore unique ontogenetic patterns within each fossil species. Experts examine growth patterns found within available Plio-Pleistocene hominid samples, and analyse variation in ontogenetic patterns and rates of development in recent modern humans in order to provide a comparative context for fossil hominid studies. Presenting studies of some of the newer juvenile fossil specimens and information on Homo antecessor, this book will provide a rich data source with which anthropologists and evolutionary biologists can address the questions posed above.
The development of populations over time, and, on longer timescales, the evolution of species, are both influenced by a complex of interacting, underlying processes. Computer simulation provides a means of experimenting within an idealised framework to allow aspects of these processes and their interactions to be isolated, controlled, and understood. In this book, computer simulation is used to model migration, extinction, fossilisation, interbreeding, selection and non-hereditary effects in the context of human populations and the observed distribution of fossil and current hominoid species. The simulations described enable the visualisation and study of lineages, genetic diversity in populations, character diversity across species and the accuracy of reconstructions, allowing insights into human evolution and the origins of humankind for graduate students and researchers in the fields of physical anthropology, human evolution, and human genetics.
In order to gain an understanding of the dynamics of human individual and average growth patterns it is essential that the right methods are selected. There are a variety of methods available to analyse individual growth patterns, to estimate variation in different growth measures in populations and to relate genetic and environmental factors to individual and average growth. This volume provides an overview of modern techniques for the assessment and collection of growth data and methods of analysis for individual and population growth data. The book contains the basic mathematical and statistical tools required to understand the concepts of the methods under discussion and worked examples of analyses, but it is neither a mathematical treatise, nor a recipe book for growth data analysis. Aimed at junior and senior researchers involved in the analysis of human growth data, this book will be an essential reference for anthropologists, auxologists and paediatricians.
Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia focuses uniquely on the physical remains of the prehistoric peoples of this region.
This book explores how seasonal variation in resource abundance might have driven primate and human evolution.
Shaping Primate Evolution is an edited collection of papers about how biological form is described in primate biology, and the consequences of form for function and behavior. The contributors are highly regarded internationally recognized scholars in the field of quantitative primate evolutionary morphology. Each chapter elaborates upon the analysis of the form-function-behavior triad in a unique and compelling way. This book is distinctive not only in the diversity of the topics discussed, but also in the range of levels of biological organization that are addressed from cellular morphometrics to the evolution of primate ecology. The book is dedicated to Charles E. Oxnard, whose influential pioneering work on innovative metric and analytic techniques has gone hand-in-hand with meticulous comparative functional analyses of primate anatomy. Through the marriage of theory with analytical applications, this volume will be an important reference work for all those interested in primate functional morphology.
Morphometrics has undergone a revolutionary transformation in the past two decades as new methods have been developed to address shortcomings in the traditional multivirate analysis of linear distances, angles, and indices. While there is much active research in the field, the new approaches to shape analysis are already making significant and ever-increasing contributions to biological research, including physical anthropology. Modern Morphometrics in Physical Anthropology highlights the basic machinery of the most important methods, while introducing novel extensions to these methods and illustrating how they provide enhanced results compared to more traditional approaches. Modern Morphometrics in Physical Anthropology provides a comprehensive sampling of the applications of modern, sophisticated methods of shape analysis in anthropology, and serves as a starting point for the exploration of these practices by students and researchers who might otherwise lack the local expertise or training to get started. This text is an important resource for the general morphometric community that includes ecologists, evolutionary biologists, systematists, and medical researchers.
Gorillas, the largest of the apes inhabiting our planet, have been a source of fear, awe, and inspiration to humans. In this book, James L. Newman brings a lifetime of study of Africa to his compelling story of the rich and varied interaction between gorillas and humans since earliest contact. He illuminates the complex relationship over time through the interlinked themes of discovery, exploitation, understanding, and continuing survival. Tragically, the number of free-living gorillas—facing habitat loss, disease, and poaching—has declined dramatically over the course of the past century, and the future of the few that remain is highly uncertain. At the same time, those in zoos and sanc...