Primates in Peril
Primates are fascinating. They are intelligent, live in complex societies and are a vital part of the ecosystem. Lemurs, lorises, galagos, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes are our closest biological relatives and just like them, humans are also primates. However, while the human population has spread to all corners of the earth, many of our closest relatives are under serious threat.
Why Is Human Color Vision so Odd?
Most mammals rely on scent rather than sight. Look at a dog’s eyes, for example: they’re usually on the sides of its face, not close together and forward-facing like ours. Having eyes on the side is good for creating a broad field of vision, but bad for depth perception and accurately judging distances in front.
A Review: The Primates Who Tell Stories
This week guest blogger Rebecca O'Neill shares her impressions of our March 15th installment of Being Human: The Primates Who Tell Stories featuring Tania Lombrozo.
Oligocene primates from the Nsungwe Formation of Tanzania
Nancy Stevens
Nancy Stevens is a professor at Ohio University. She was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in the spring of 2011 for her project entitled “Oligocene primates from the Nsungwe Formation of Tanzania.”
The late Oligocene Nsungwe Formation (~25Ma) is located in the Rukwa Rift Basin in southwestern Tanzania. These deposits represent the only late Oligocene primate fossil
Origin and Early Evolutionary History of Primates
Stephen Chester screening for Paleocene plesiadapiforms and other mammal fossils in Montana. Photo credit: Eric Sargis
As a PhD candidate at Yale University, Stephen Chester was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in the spring of 2010 for his project entitled “Origin and early evolutionary history of primates.”
Stephen Chester studies the fossils of plesiadapiforms. Plesiadapiforms are an extinct group