QUATERNARY ENVIRONMENTS AND THE EVOLUTION OF PRIMATES IN EAST-ASIA, WITH NOTES ON 2 NEW SPECIMENS OF FOSSIL CERCOPITHECIDAE FROM CHINA

Primate faunas in East Asia since the mid-Tertiary have undergone a se ries of major changes in response to a complex sequence of environment al changes. As a consequence of the Himalayan orogeny and the rapid, e pisodic uplift of the Tibetan plateau, the climate of East Asia during the late Tertiary became monsoonal and thus more strongly seasonal. T his led to the expansion of seasonal tropical forests and, in some are as, grasslands. During the Pleistocene, the climatic consequences of c ontinued rapid uplift of the Tibetan plateau and other land masses (e. g. the Qinling mountains) were combined with those of glaciations, res ulting in dramatic climatic oscillations between warm-humid and cold-d ry phases. The contraction of tropical environments that began in the late Tertiary reached its peak at the last glacial maximum (LGM) and w as responsible for the decline in the distribution and diversity of ho minoids in East Asia. Cercopithecids, which were only minor elements o f the late Tertiary primate faunas, colonized tropical, subtropical an d temperate environments in the Pleistocene and were able to reradiate into those environments after the LGM. The abilities of monkeys to po pulate a wide range of terrestrial environments (eurytopy) contrast wi th those of apes, which are restricted to tropical forest environments (stenotopy).