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. |
