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8.1.1: How to Diagnose a Primate

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    136419
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    When you examine the skeleton of a mammal, how do you know if you are looking at a primate? Some physical traits are useful in the diagnosis of primates and have been used to make decisions about which living and fossil mammals belong in our definition of the Order Primates. However, primates are hard to diagnose. There is no obvious diagnostic trait of our own order. From the first modern attempts to classify primates, scientists have struggled to come up with traits that are possessed exclusively and universally by primates. In the end, most have generated lists of traits that are of variable utility in making a correct diagnosis.

    In the 19th century, British naturalist St. George Jackson Mivart articulated the most famous diagnosis of the Order Primates. This “primate pattern” is a list of the following traits: nails, clavicles, placentation, orbits encircled by bone, three tooth types (i.e., incisors, canines, premolars/molars), posterior lobe of the brain, calcarine fissure of the brain, opposable thumb and/or big toe, nail on the big toe, well-developed cecum, pendulous penis, testes within a scrotum, and two nipples in the pectoral region. Many primatologists have pointed out that no single feature on this list is unique to primates. Also, nails appear twice. Taken together, perhaps it is a useful list. Unfortunately, some of these traits (e.g., three types of teeth) are neither clear nor true of all primates. Other traits, like nipple number and location, are quite variable among primates. Still others, for example the pendulousness of the penis, can be assessed in only males.

    Modifications of this approach by subsequent scientists have included lists of trends, like that suggested by Le Gros Clark. Clark’s trends emphasize the flexibility and generalized nature of the limbs, mobility and dexterity of the digits, reduction of the snout with elaboration of the visual system, retention of simple teeth, and elaboration of the brain with prolonged period of juvenile dependence. Later, Robert D. Martin emphasized distinctive reproductive characteristics of primates, along with details of cranial anatomy and grasping extremities (Martin 1968, 1990).

    Most modern workers have focused on the grasping extremities and flattened nails, as well as branching of the carotid artery supply to the brain and of the formation of the auditory bulla of the cranium. In extant primates, the brain receives its blood supply via two principal routes (one pathway to the back of the brain and one toward the front). For all taxa, the paired vertebral arteries provide most of the blood to the back of the brain. Blood supply to the front, however, is more complex and involves branches of the internal carotid artery (ICA) and external carotid artery (ECA). For haplorhines (tarsiers, catarrhines, and platyrrhines), the main artery to the front of the brain is a branch of the ICA called the promontory artery (though most human gross anatomy textbooks simply refer to it as the internal carotid artery). In most lemuriforms, this is the job of a second branch of the ICA known as the stapedial artery (which tends to be absent in adult haplorhines). Finally, in lorisiformes and cheirogaleid lemuriformes, the front of the brain is supplied by the ascending pharyngeal artery (a branch of the ECA). These differences provide a valuable method for reconstructing phylogenetic relationships between fossil primates and living taxa.

    In all extant primates, the auditory bulla is ossified and is formed by an extension of the petrous part of the temporal bone (or, more simply, petrosal bone). This last trait, a petrosal bulla, is perhaps the best candidate for a universally applicable diagnostic trait of primates. Unfortunately, it is often extremely difficult to assess in an adult cranium and perhaps even more difficult to assess in a fossil that has various cracks and deformities associated with preservation and preparation.

    Although taxonomists crave neat and complete lists of traits to aid in sorting animals into bins, the true definition of a phylogenetic group is always one of descent from a common ancestor. The Order Primates is made up of all of the descendants of some common ancestor in the remote past. This last common ancestor probably did not possess all of the traits common to primates today and might have been indistinguishable from other primitive placental mammals living in the Cretaceous Period.


    8.1.1: How to Diagnose a Primate is shared under a CC BY-NC license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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