FUNCTIONAL MORPHOLOGICAL SIMILARITIES IN THE LOCOMOTOR SKELETON OF MIOCENE CATARRHINES AND PLATYRRHINE MONKEYS

Noncercopithecid Miocene catarrhines share numerous features of their postcranial skeleton with extant platyrrhines, particularly pitheciine s, cebines, and atelines. For any given fossil taxon, these similariti es do not extend throughout the skeleton. Also there may be similariti es to more than one platyrrhine taxon, within different parts of the p ostcranium, or even within a single bone. These similarities are of tw o types. Features that are most likely to be retentions from the primi tive anthropoid condition are present in many Miocene taxa. They are p art of functional complexes associated with the performance of quadrup edal and possibly orthograde climbing activities. Other features, espe cially present in nonhominoid primitive catarrhines, are related to th e performance of suspensory behaviors, and reflect a partial convergen ce on the suspensory ateline condition.