The fossil record of primate intelligence: From the earliest primates to human origins

Authors

  • David R. Begun University of Toronto (Canada).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.14.25418

Keywords:

primate evolution, paleoneurology, paleoanthropology, hominoids, cognition

Abstract

Animals collect and process the information they need to survive and reproduce. The means by which they process information is through the capacity of intelligence, which is in turn a function of the brain, its morphology, size, organization, and cytoarchitecture. While the internal organization and cellular interconnectivity of the brains of fossilized animals are invisible to paleontologists, the size and surface morphology of the brain are sometimes preserved, usually only in part, in the form of endocasts (casts, either natural or artificial, of the inside of the brain case). This broad survey of the evolution of intelligence in primates as interpreted from the fossil record of endocasts is primarily focused on the lineages that inform us more directly about the evolutionary events leading to the origin of human intelligence.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

David R. Begun, University of Toronto (Canada).

Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto (Canada). His research is focused on the evolution of the lineages of great apes and humans. He has published The real planet of the apes: A new history of human origin s (2015, Princenton University Press).

References

Alba, D. M. (2012). Fossil apes from the Vallès-Penedès basin. Evolutionary Anthropology, Issues, News, and Reviews, 21(6), 254–269. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21312

Begun, D. R. (2015a). The real planet of the apes. Princeton University Press.

Begun, D. R. (2015b). Fossil record of Miocene hominoids. In W. Henke & I. Tattersall (Eds.) Handbook of palaeoanthropology, pp. 1262–1332. Springer

Begun, D. R., & Kordos, L. (2004). Cranial evidence of the evolution of intelligence in fossil apes. In A. E. Russon & D. R. Begun (Eds.), The evolution of thought: Evolutionary origins of great ape intelligence (pp. 260–279). Cambridge University Press.

Beard, K. C. (1990). Gliding behaviour and palaeoecology of the alleged primate family Paromomyidae (Mammalia, Dermaptera). Nature, 345, 340–341. https://doi.org/10.1038/345340a0

Bloch, J. I., Silcox, M. T., Boyer, D. H., & Sargis, E. J. (2007). New Paleocene skeletons and the relationship of plesiadapiforms to crown-clade primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(4), 1159–1164. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0610579104

Böhme, M., Spassov, N., Fuss, J., Tröscher, A., Deane, A. S., Prieto, J., Kirscher, U., Lechner, T., & Begun, D. R. (2019). A new Miocene ape and locomotion in the ancestor of great apes and humans. Nature, 575(7783), 489–493. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1731-0

Cartmill, M. (1992). New views on primate origins. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 1(3), 105–111. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.1360010308

Gibson, K. R., Rumbaugh, D., & Beran, M. (2001). Bigger is better: Primate brain size in relationship to cognition. In D. Falk & K. R. Gibson (Eds.), Evolutionary anatomy of the primate cerebral cortex (pp. 79–97). Cambridge University Press,

Godinot, M. (2015). Fossil record of the primates from the Paleocene to the Oligocene. In W. Henke & I. Tattersall (Eds.), Handbook of palaeoanthropology (pp. 1137–1259). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27800-6_68-1

Gunz, P., Kozakowski, S., Neubauer, S., Le Cabec, A., Kullmer, O., Benazzi, S., Hublin, J., & Begun, D. R. (2020). Skull reconstruction of the late Miocene ape Rudapithecus hungaricus from Rudabánya, Hungary. Journal of Human Evolution, 138, 102687. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.102687

Kay, R. F., Thorington, R. W., & Houde, P. (1990). Eocene plesiadapiform shows affinities with flying lemurs not primates. Nature, 345, 342–344. http://doi.org/10.1038/345342a0

Kelley, J. (2004). Life history and cognitive evolution in the apes. In A. E. Russon & D. R. Begun (Eds.), The evolution of thought: Evolutionary origins of great ape intelligence (pp. 280–297). Cambridge University Press.

Leakey, M., & Walker, A. (1997). Afropithecus: Function and phylogeny. In D. R. Begun, C. V. Ward, & M. D. Rose (Eds.), Function, phylogeny and fossils: Miocene hominoid evolution and adaptations, (pp. 225–239). Plenum Press.

López-Aguirre, C., Lang, M. M., & Silcox, M. T. (2022). Diet drove brain and dental morphological coevolution in strepsirrhine primates. PLOS ONE, 17(6), e0269041. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269041

McNulty, K. P., Begun, D. R., Kelley, J., Manthi, F. K., & Mbua, E. N. (2015). A systematic revision of Proconsul with the description of a new genus of early Miocene hominoid. Journal of Human Evolution, 84, 42–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.03.009

Moyà-Solà, S., Köhler, M., Alba, D. M., Casanovas-Vilar, I., & Galindo, J. (2004). Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, a new middle Miocene great ape from Spain. Science, 306(5700), 1339–1344. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1103094

Nakatsukasa, M., & Kunimatsu, Y. (2009). Nacholapithecus and its importance for understanding hominoid evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 18(3), 103–119. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.20208

Radinsky, L. (1979). The fossil record of primate brain evolution. 49th James Arthur Lecture. American Museum of Natural History.

Silcox, M. T., Sargis, E. J., Bloch, J. I., & Boyer, D. M. (2015). Primate origins and supraordinal relationships: Morphological evidence. In W. Henke & I. Tattersall (Eds.), Handbook of palaeoanthropology (pp. 1053–1081). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39979-4_29

Smith, T. M., Martin, L. B., & Leaky, M. G. (2003). Enamel thickness, microstructure and development in Afropithecus turkanensis. Journal of Human Evolution, 44(3), 283–306. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0047-2484(03)00006-x

Smith, T. M., Tafforeau, P., Pouech, J., & Begun, D. R. (2019). Enamel thickness and dental development in Rudapithecus hungaricus. Journal of Human Evolution, 136, 102649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.102649

Street, S. E., Navarrete, A. F., Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N. (2017). Coevolution of cultural intelligence, extended life history, sociality, and brain size in primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 7908–7914. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1620734114

Sussman, R. W. (1991). Primate origins and the evolution of angiosperms. American Journal of Primatology, 23, 209–223. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.1350230402

Ward, C. V., Flynn, M., & Begun, D. R. (2004). Body size and intelligence in hominoid evolution. In A. E. Russon & D. R. Begun (Eds.), The evolution of thought: Evolutionary origins of great ape intelligence (pp. 335–349). Cambridge University Press.

Wu, Y., L. Fan, L., Bai, L., Li, Q., Gu, H., Sun, C., Jiang, T., & Feng, J. (2022). Ambush predation and the origin of euprimates. Science Advances, 8(37), eabn6248. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn6248

Downloads

Additional Files

Published

2024-01-11

How to Cite

Begun, D. R. (2024). The fossil record of primate intelligence: From the earliest primates to human origins. Metode Science Studies Journal, (14), 95–101. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.14.25418
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    657
  • PDF
    192
  • (Español)
    0

Issue

Pieces of science (vol. 14, 2024)

Section

Primate relatives

License

All the documents in the OJS platform are open access and property of their respective authors.

Authors publishing in the journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors keep the rights and guarantee Metode Science Studies Journal the right to be the first publication of the document, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship and publication in the journal.
  2. Authors are allowed and encouraged to spread their work through electronic means using personal or institutional websites (institutional open archives, personal websites or professional and academic networks profiles) once the text has been published.

Metrics

Similar Articles

> >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.