| MAJOR PUBLICATIONS
1. Jablonski, N.G. (In press) Primate homeland:
Forests and the evolution of primates during the Tertiary
and Quaternary in Asia. For: Anthropological Sciences.
2. Jablonski, N.G. (In press) Primate diversity
and environmental seasonality in historical perspective. In:
D. Brockman and C. van Schaik, eds., Primate Seasonality.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Jablonski, N.G. (In press) The fossil
record and biogeographic history of gibbons in China. In:
L. Sheeran, (ed.) The Gibbon in China.
4. Jablonski, N.G. (2003) The
evolution of the tarsiid niche. In: Wright, P.C., Simons,
E.L., and Gursky, S., eds. Tarsiers: Past, Present and
Future. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
pp. 35-49.
5. Jablonski, N.G., Whitfort, M. J., Roberts-Smith,
N. and Xu, Q.-Q. (2000) The influence of life history and
diet on the distribution of of catarrhine primates during
the Pleistocene in eastern Asia. J. Hum. Evol. 39:131-157.
6. Jablonski, N.G. and Kelley, J. (1997)
Did a major immunological event shape the evolutionary histories
of apes and Old World Monkeys? J. Hum. Evol. 33:513-520.
7. Jablonski, N.G. and Crompton, R.H. (1994)
Feeding behavior, mastication, and tooth wear in the western
tarsier, Tarsius bancanus. Int. J. Primatol. 15:29-59.
8. Jablonski, N.G. and Peng Y.-Z., (eds.)
(1993) Primatology in China. Double issue of Folia Primatologica
devoted to Chinese primates. 132 pp.
9. Jablonski, N.G. (1986) A history of form
and function in the primate masticatory apparatus from the
ancestral primate through the strepsirhines. In: Swindler,
D.R. (ed.) Comparative Primate Biology. Volume I.
Systematics, Anatomy, and Evolution. New York: Alan Liss,
pp. 537-558.
|
KEY PUBLICATION
JABLONSKI, NINA G. 2003. The Evolution of the Tarsiid Niche.
Pages 35-49 in Patricia C. Wright, Elwyn L. Simons and Sharon
Gursky (eds.), Tarsiers: Past, Present and Future.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
ABSTRACT
Long before indisputable fossil evidence of tarsiers was discovered,
tarsiers were considered “living fossils”. This
assignment was based as much on their primitive gestalt as on
the morphological affinities of tarsiers to members of various
Paleogene primate and plesiadapiform taxa, and on predictions
based on cladistic reconstructions of the tarsiers phylogenic
position. Thus, through many years of learned discourse on tarsiers,
“the ‘living fossil’ [had] no fossil record!”
(Schwartz 1984, 47). In recent years, this situation has improved,
although the fossil record of tarsiers is still more gap than
record. The fragmentary remains of fossil tarsiids recovered
from deposits of middle Eocene age onward from Egypt, China,
and Thailand indicate that the tarsier’s “living
fossil” moniker is well deserved. The morphology of these
fragments is remarkably modern, or perhaps better said, the
body plan of modern tarsiers is remarkably ancient and conservative.
This leads to the inevitable question: What made tarsiers successful
in the first place, and why have they persisted, little changed,
through most of the Tertiary through to the present day? These
questions are the heart of this paper.
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