Plavcan's Study Guide for Introduction to Physical Anthropology
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| Morphogenesis | the formation of the body’s tissues and organs. | |
| Growth | increase in the size of a structure or organism. | |
| Development | changes in size and shape and elaboration of structures. | |
| Bone growth | happens with the formation cartilage templates or membranes in the fetus, in which ‘ossification centers’ appear. Subsequent growth happens at ‘epiphyseal plates’ at the end of long bones, and by the progressive addition of bone to the edges of other bones – take osteology if you want to know more! | |
| Ossification | deposition of bone in a non-bone structure. | |
| Epiphysis | the end of a long bone | |
| Diaphysis | the shaft of a long bone | |
| Epiphyseal plates | the junction between the epiphysis and diaphysis where growth of a long bone occurs. | |
| Stature | how tall you are. Changes as you grow. Also changes in populations across generations in relation to nutrition – better health and nutrition makes for taller people. | |
| Adolescent growth spurt | unique to humans, who have a long period of slow growth called childhood, followed by a period of rapid growth as sexual maturity is reached (the growth spurt). Most animals keep growing at pretty much one pace, with no prolonged childhood. | |
| Sexual dimorphism | difference in form between males and females. Human males tend to be bigger and more ‘robust’ than human females. | |
| Basic nutrients | protein, carbohydrate, lipids, vitamins, minerals | |
| Essential amino acids | amino acids that your body cannot synthesize, and therefore must get through your diet. | |
| Scurvy | lack of vitamin C – leads to all sorts of nasty problems. Prevented by eating fruit. | |
| Malnutrition | lack of essential dietary components. | |
| Undernutrition | not enough to eat | |
| Lactation | period when a mother secretes milk. | |
| Fertility | ability of female to conceive | |
| ‘Catch-up-period’ | period during growth of a child when she/he can grow faster and ‘catch-up’ to normally developing children following a period of mal- or undernutrition. | |
| Pregnancy | period of fetal development in mother. | |
| Infancy | time between birth and weaning (the time when nursing stops). Therefore it corresponds exactly to the period of nursing. In modern industrial societies, this period is cut short by early weaning. In ‘natural’ human populations this period can be up to about 4 years. Mother is usually infertile during lactation (‘lactational amenorrhea’). | |
| Childhood | period of slow physical development in humans (only) thought to provide extended period for learning and social development. | |
| Adolescence | period when sexual maturity is achieved, along with rapid physical development to adult form. | |
| Adulthood | period of prolonged sexual, mental, and physical maturity. | |
| Senescence | failure through age of organs or organ systems. In humans, most organ systems begin to become senescent in the 70's or 80's. | |
| Menopause | normal senescence of the female reproductive organs long before other organ systems become senescent. Unique to humans. | |
| The geological time scale | This gives you a perspective on when primate (and later human) evolution occurs. Note that the time scale is hierarchical! 1. Phanerozoic 2. Paleozoic 3. Mesozoic 4. Cenozoic 5. Precambian…[others]… 6. Triassic 7. Jurassic 8. Cretaceous 9. Tertiary 10. Quaternary 11. Paleocene 12. Eocene 13. Oligocene 14. Miocene 15. Pliocene 16. Pleistocene 17. Holocene | |
| Mesozoic | age of dinosaurs, but mammals first appear. | |
| Cenozoic | age of mammals. | |
| Paleocene | first primates show up. | |
| Eocene | first primates that look like modern primates show up (tarsier –like, lemur-like, and anthropoid-like things) | |
| Oligocene | origins of platyrrhine/catarrhine split. | |
| Miocene | cercopithecoid/hominoid split, apes are most abundant. | |
| Pliocene | origin of most modern groups, hominids show up. | |
| Pleistocene | ice ages, evolution of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. | |
| Holocene | you're living in this age now. | |
| Primitive characters | those traits that were present in the common ancestor of a group of animals. | |
| Derived characters | those traits that are shared by only a subset of a group of animals, all descended from a common ancestor. | |
| cladistic classification | one that groups all the descendants of a common ancestor into a group, no matter what they look like. | |
| gradistic classification | groups animals together on the basis of overall similarity (this is often called ‘evolutionary classification’ to indicate that there is a limit – only fairly closely related species are grouped in a gradistic classification). | |
| Where do primates live in the world? | all over the tropics and subtropics – note that platyrrhines all live in south America, lemurs all live in Madagascar. | |
| The habitats primates live in | rain forest, forest, gallery forest, savanna, tropical forest divisions, emergent canopy, main canopy, understory | |
| Arboreal quadruped | all fours above the branch | |
| Terrestrial quadruped | all fours on the ground | |
| Knuckle-walker | on the knuckle, like a chimp | |
| Bipedal | walking on two feet, like humans | |
| Brachiator | swings from the arms under the branches. | |
| Slow climber | small animal, climbs slowly, always holding on. | |
| Leaper | moves around by leaping! | |
| Vertical clinger and leaper | holds onto vertical tree trunks, jumps with powerful hind legs. | |
| suspensory climber | big things that climb around hanging from branches, like the orangutan. | |
| What primates eat (and a little bit why) | folivore (a herbivore that specializes in eating leaves), frugivore (fruit eater), insectivore (eats insects); insects and leaves give protein. Fruit gives sugar (energy). | |
| Kay’s Threshold | The observation that animals weighing under 500 grams cannot sustain themselves on leaves, while animals weighing over 500 grams cannot sustain themselves on insects. | |
| diurnal | active in daytime | |
| nocturnal | active at night | |
| noyau | females with separate territories, males with large territories that overlap those of females | |
| polyandry | one female, more than one male (typically closely related males). Males help rear offspring. | |
| monogamy | group composed of one adult male, one adult female, and their offspring. | |
| polygyny | single-male, multi-female groups where a single male excludes other males from access to a small group of females. | |
| polygynandry | multi-male multi-female, where a group of males live with a group of females. | |
| Cebidae | howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys | |
| ‘pithecines’ | the really ugly and goofy looking critters -- cebus monkeys, spider monkeys, titi monkeys, woolly spider monkeys, night monkeys | |
| Lesser apes | ‘hylobatids’ or ‘gibbons’ | |
| Great apes | orangutan, gorilla | |
| Chimpanzees | Pan troglodyte | |
| Bonobo | Pan paniscus | |
| Primates live in groups for two reasons | 1) groups of females band together and provide mutual defense to ensure that there is enough food by keeping other females out. 2) Diurnal primates form groups to help defend against predators. | |
| Dominance | one animal is able to ‘boss around’ another, most commonly by simply supplanting the animal without a fight. | |
| Dominance hierarchies | A linear sequence of dominance among animals. | |
| Linear male dominance hierarchy | Males set up a ‘pecking order’ so that Bob is dominant to everybody, Chuck is dominant to everybody except Bob, Bill is dominant to everybody except Bob and Chuck and so on… | |
| female matrilineal dominance hierarchy | a linear dominance hierarchy, except now it is whole groups of related females that are dominant or subordinate to other groups of females. Thus, every female of the ‘alpha’ matriline (all descended from Martha) is dominant to every female of the ‘beta’ matriline (all descendents of Elizabeth). | |
| Aggression | antagonistic or hostile behavior | |
| Escalation | escalation of agonistic competition into a fight. | |
| Agonistic | ‘contest’ – individuals compete aggressively and often hostilely for access to mates, resources etc. | |
| Non-agonistic | ‘scramble’ – individuals displace each other without fighting. If I have six pieces of pie, my five friends and I will divide it up without fighting. However, if I choose first, my friends can't have my piece, so they are displaced to choosing the other pieces. | |
| Reconciliation | making up after a fight. Often done by grooming. | |
| Coalitions | two or more individuals who partner up to fight another. | |
| Male type | two males gang up on another. When he is defeated, the two males turn on each other. | |
| Female type | related females stick together and help each other in fights. Permanent bond, usually associated with matrilineal dominance hierarchies. | |
| Altruism | helping out another individual at some cost to yourself. Usually done towards relatives. | |
| Mother-infant bond | Basic primate social relationship. This doesn’t form until about 3 weeks after birth so that if the child isn’t healthy or dies, the mother can let it go. | |
| Core area | the basic part of a territory that a group will actively defend from other groups. | |
| Day range | the area that a group will use during a single day. | |
| Infanticide | males will kill the offspring of females so that the females will come into estrous and he can mate with them. This is a male reproductive tactic, and is contingent on two things: 1) lactational amenorrhea, and 2) males know which offspring they did not sire. Note that females develop several counterstrategies to overcome infanticide, the most effective of which is confusing paternity by promiscuous mating. | |
| Archontans | arboreal mammalian group composed of primates, bats, flying lemurs, and tree shrews, etc. | |
| Plesiadapiforms | earliest primate-like things from the Paleocene. Many are too derived to be ancestral to primates. Earliest ones have teeth that are strongly indicative that they share a common ancestor with primates. | |
| Purgatorius | the earliest fossil that could have given rise to both primates and plesiadapiforms. | |
| Omomyids | early tarsier-like primates; sister group to haplorrhines. | |
| Adapids | early lemur-like primate; sister group to strepsirrhines. | |
| Cercomoniine adapids | thought by some to have given rise to anthropoids (a minority viewpoint). | |
| Pondaungia, Amphipithecus | southeast Asian fossils that were thought to have give rise to anthropoids, but are now known to be specialized adapids. | |
| Eosimiids | earliest known anthropoids. | |
| Tethys sea | the warm sea that ran between north Africa and Europe, north India and south Asia. Many tropical mammalian groups (including primates) originated from species living in areas bounding the Tethys sea. | |
| Oligocene | modern catarrhines and platyrrhines show up. | |
| Fayum Egypt | Richest Oligocene fossil beds in the world. | |
| Parapithecids | early anthropoids not specially related to either platyrrhines or catarrhines. | |
| Oligopithecids | early catarrhines not specially related to either hominoids or cercopithecoids; very primitive (epitomized by Catopithecus). | |
| Propliopithecids | another group of early catarrhines, again not related specially to either hominoids or cercopithecoids; slightly more derived than the oligopithecids. | |
| Branisella | earliest known New World Monkey actually found in the New World. | |
| Proteopithecus | suggested animal related to platyrrhines. Best evidence that platyrrhines as a group actually originated in Africa. | |
| Miocene | evolution of monkeys and apes. Note that apes are most diverse and abundant (in number of species) during this period. | |
| Sivapithecines | group of apes in the late Miocene. Last survivor is probably the orangutan. | |
| Strepsirrhine groups | Lemur, Lorises, Galagos (Bushbabies) | |
| Haplorrhine groups | Tarsiers, Anthropoids | |
| Anthropoid groups | Catarrhine, Platyrrhine | |
| Catarrhine groups and traits | Old World Monkeys; Apes | |
| Platyrrhine groups | New World Monkeys; Colobine; Cercopithecoids | |
| Old World Monkey dentition | 2.1.2.3 | |
| New World Monkey dentition | 2.1.3.3 |
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