David Begun

University of Toronto | U of T · Department of Anthropology

The history of paleoprimatology effectively begins in the early nineteenth century with the discovery of a fossil from the gypsum quarries of Paris. The Fayum catarrhines are distinguished from other Fayum primates in details of their dental anatomy, but mainly in having only two premolars on each side of each jaw. The skeleton of Aegyptopithecus s...

Extinct megafaunal mammals in the Americas are often linked to seed-dispersal mutualisms with large-fruiting tree species, but large-fruiting species in Europe and Asia have received far less attention. Several species of arboreal Maloideae (apples and pears) and Prunoideae (plums and peaches) evolved large fruits starting around nine million years...

The calcar femorale is an internal bony structure of the proximal femur considered to be functionally related to bipedal locomotion. Among extant primates, the presence of a calcar femorale has been so far documented in extant humans and Pan and, among extinct hominins, in the Late Miocene Orrorin, in a Pliocene Australopithecus, and in a Middle Pl...

The Suidae from the late Miocene of Alsótelekes (northeastern Hungary, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county) are described and assigned to Propotamochoerus palaeochoerus (Suinae) and cf. Parachleuastochoerus (Tetraconodontinae). The co-occurrence of these two taxa agrees with a reference to the early Vallesian (MN 9), as previously indicated from biochronol...

The evolution of the present-day African savannah fauna has been substantially influenced by the dispersal of Eurasian ancestors into Africa. The ancestors evolved endemically, together with the autochthonous taxa, into extant Afrotropical clades during the last 5 million years. However, it is unclear why Eurasian ancestors moved into Africa. Here...

Significance Reconstructing the phylogenetic relationships of extinct apes is challenging due to their fragmentary fossil record and the recurrent independent evolution of morphological features. Given the relevance of the phylogenetic signal of the bony labyrinth, here we assess the phylogenetic affinities of the late Miocene great apes Hispanopit...

Although hylobatids are the most speciose of the living apes, their morphological interspecies and intraspecies variation remains poorly understood. Here, we assess mandibular shape variation in two species of Hylobates, white-handed (Hylobates lar) and black-handed (Hylobates agilis) gibbons. Using 71 three-dimensional landmarks to quantify mandib...

Many ideas have been proposed to explain the origin of bipedalism in hominins and suspension in great apes (hominids); however, fossil evidence has been lacking. It has been suggested that bipedalism in hominins evolved from an ancestor that was a palmigrade quadruped (which would have moved similarly to living monkeys), or from a more suspensory q...

Objectives: Here, we quantify and compare the cross-sectional shape of the mandibular corpus between M1 and M2 during growth in Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes, and Pongo pygmaeus. The goal is to assess the hypothesis that the shape of the corpus is influenced by the development of permanent molars in their crypts, by examining ontogenetic changes i...

The fossil record of middle and late Miocene Eurasian hominoids has expanded considerably over the past few decades, particularly with the recovery of numerous isolated teeth and jaws. Scholars have turned to assessments of internal tooth structure and growth to make sense of the evolutionary radiations of these primates as well as their affinities...

Substantial differences among the pelves of anthropoids have been central to interpretations of the selection pressures that shaped extant hominoids, yet the evolution of the hominoid pelvis has been poorly understood due to the scarcity of fossil material. A recently discovered partial hipbone attributed to the 10 million-year-old fossil ape Rudap...

A phylogenetic analysis of European pliopithecoids using dental and mandibular characters.

A two-dimensional analysis of pliopithecoid dental morphology. More specifically, this study examines metric differences in lower molar morphology between P. antiquus and pliopithecoid specimens from Göriach, Austria. We conclude these two samples do not represent the same species.

Objectives Mandibular corpus robusticity (corpus breadth/corpus height) is the most commonly utilized descriptor of the mandibular corpus in the great ape and hominin fossil records. As a consequence of its contoured shape, linear metrics used to characterize mandibular robusticity are inadequate to quantify the shape of the mandibular corpus. Here...

The current consensus on hominoid taxonomy is presented here along with a general description of the distribution, diet, positional behavior, socioecology, conservation status, and some unique behaviors of living hominoids. On the surface, hominoids would appear to be thriving today, with many species and multiple genera. However, nearly all of the...

Sivapithecus is historically among the first fossil primates described and has figured prominently in the history of paleoanthropology. Originally called Palaeopithecus, Sivapithecus and another Miocene ape from South Asia, Ramapithecus, were widely accepted as ancestral to great apes and humans, respectively. Today, Ramapithecus is understood to b...

Dryopithecus is a genus of Miocene ape known from Europe. In the past the nomen Dryopithecus was used for most fossil apes in Asia and Africa as well as Europe, in part to distinguish them from a few Miocene apes that were thought to be more directly related to humans. While Dryopithecus today technically refers to just one or perhaps a few species...

Ape evolution has been the subject of numerous publications since the first fossil apes were recognized in the nineteenth century. Recent reviews of ape evolution have focused on surveying the fossil record and integrating that with the ever‐increasing evidence from molecular systematics of evolutionary relations among living hominoids, including h...

The rich fossiliferous locality of Rudabánya (Hungary) is dated to the Vallesian (late Miocene, MN 9). It contains several taxa of the order Carnivora. The aim of the present paper is to describe remains belonging to a new genus and species of Ursidae, Miomaci panonnicum. It is represented by upper and lower teeth which are compared to other Miocen...

The chronology of dental development and life history of primitive catarrhines provides a crucial comparative framework for understanding the evolution of hominoids and Old World monkeys. Among the extinct groups of catarrhines are the pliopithecoids, with no known descendants. Anapithecus hernyaki is a medium-size stem catarrhine known from Austri...

The split of our own clade from the Panini is undocumented in the fossil record. To fill this gap we investigated the dentognathic morphology of Graecopithecus freybergi from Pyrgos Vassilissis (Greece) and cf. Graecopithecus sp. from Azmaka (Bulgaria), using new μCT and 3D reconstructions of the two known specimens. Pyrgos Vassilissis and Azmaka a...

The split of our own clade from the Panini is undocumented in the fossil record. To fill this gap we investigated the dentognathic morphology of Graecopithecus freybergi from Pyrgos Vassilissis (Greece) and cf. Graecopithecus sp. from Azmaka (Bulgaria), using new μCT and 3D reconstructions of the two known specimens. Pyrgos Vassilissis and Azmaka a...

3D-reconstructions of the P4 from Azmaka (RIM 438/387) and the preserved lower teeth of G. freybergi from Pyrgos virtually isolated from the type mandible. The P4 is shown in distal and mesial view (top row), and apical and buccal view (bottom row) with associated pulp canals. The lower dentition is shown in distal and mesial view (top row), and ap...

Micro-CT transverse sections through the left and right mandibular corpus of G. freybergi. Sections at the level of p4, m1, m2, and m3 (top down), perpendicularly to the alveolar plane. Measurements of mandibular height (H) and breadth (B) in red. The dashed lines indicate surfaces where the cortical bone is crushed or parts of the corpus are missi...

Virtual reconstruction of the Pyrgos mandible with root length measurements and estimated corrections. a, Right hemimandible with cervical planes (CP) and root length measurements at the longest radicals of right m1-m3. The CPs are constructed through the cervices of the right m3, m2 and m2-p4. The CP of the right m2-p4 is extended mesially to the...

Mandibular corpus dimensions of G. freybergi and other Miocene and Pliocene hominids. RI = robusticity index. Values in parantheses = corrections for breakage. Data: G. freybergi: *this study; Ouranopithecus macedoniensis (RPl-54: *this study and [47]; RPl-56, 75 and NKT-21: [47]; RPl-89, 90, 80; 94: [48]); Ankarapithecus meteai: (AS95-500: [49]);...

Arcade width in the types of G. freybergi and O. macedoniensis. The arcade width at each tooth position was measured at the lingual sides of the dental cervices (lingual distances between the left and right tooth row). The measuring position along the tooth row is given as distance from mid-m3 (average of both sides). All values in mm. (XLSX)

Dental crown dimensions in P4 of cf. Graecopithecus sp., O. macedoniensis and O. turkae. In specimens that preserve the left and right dentition, the mean value of both teeth is given. Data: cf. Graecopithecus sp.: [39]; O. macedoniensis: [39, 48, 56]; O. turkae: [41]. (XLSX)

Radial enamel thickness of fossil and extant hominids. Data: cf. Graecopithecus sp. and G. freybergi: this study; O. turkae: [41]; Griphopithecus, H. sapiens (Ho 08 and Ho23), P. troglodytes, G. gorilla and P. pygmaeus: [59]; H. sapiens (n = 10): [60]; H. sapiens (n = 34): [58]. (XLSX)

Absolute root lengths in the lower dentition (c-m3) of G. freybergi and comparative species. The preserved root length of fragmentary roots is indicated as minimum length (>). Estimations of their maximum length are given for G. freybergi (in brackets); see also S3 Fig. The measured root positions are indicated as follows: single root (1R), mesial...

Further comparison. (DOCX)

Dental crown dimensions in p4 and m2 of G. freybergi compared to fossil hominids and chimpanzees. Parantheses indicate estimations. In specimens that preserve the left and right dentition, the mean value of both teeth is given. Data: G. freybergi: this study; O. macedoniensis: [47, 48]; O. turkae: [41]; N. nakayamai: [50]; A. meteai: [49, 55]; S. t...

The Pliopithecoidea is an extinct group of catarrhines that evolved before the divergence of living Old World monkeys and apes. The fossil record of pliopithecoids ranges in time from about 18 to 7 million years ago and geographically from China to Spain. There are no known descendants of the pliopithecoids and their origins are clouded in mystery.

The earliest fossil evidence of the Hominoidea is found in Africa at about 26 million years ago (Ma), but molecular dating of hominoid divergence events suggests an origin as early as 30 Ma. The oldest hominoids resemble the primitive catarrhine Aegyptopithecus in dental morphology, but by about 20 Ma the dentition is more modern. Early apes, best...

Hands of extant hominoids are highly derived compared with those of non-hominoid catarrhines. The evolution of the ape hand started from an appendage very well suited for powerful pollical-assisted grasping that supplied a balancing function in response to the loss of tail as seen in the early Miocene Proconsul (or Ekembo). Nacholapithecus from the...

Examining how species use and partition resources within an environment can lead to a better understanding of community assembly and diversity. The rich early Late Miocene (early Vallesian) deposits at Rudabánya II (R. II) in northern central Hungary preserve an abundance of forest dwelling taxa, including the hominoid Rudapithecus hungaricus. Here...

Time in Europe put apes on the road to becoming human millions of years before Homo sapiens evolved, argues anthropologist David Begun

Rudabánya is rare among Eurasian Miocene fossil primate localities in preserving both a hominid and pliopithecoid, and as such provides the unique opportunity to reconstruct the nature of sympatry and niche partitioning in these taxa. Rudapithecus and Anapithecus have similar locomotor and positional behavior and overlapping body mass ranges. While...

This introductory chapter of A Companion to Paleoanthropology explains how the chapters in this book are organized around the themes that represent major areas of research in paleoanthropology. The first section of the book is on experimental approaches, quantitative methods, and life history theory. The second section on individual anatomical regi...

This chapter reviews the main patterns in the fossil ape record and how they inform about the evolutionary history of the living apes. It covers the origin of the hominoids at the end of the Oligocene (about 25 Ma, or millions of years ago), their successive hominoid radiations in Africa, Europe and Asia, and the disappearance of nearly all fossil...

A Companion to Paleoanthropology presents a compendium of readings from leading scholars in the field that define our current knowledge of the major discoveries and developments in human origins and human evolution, tracing the fossil record from primate and hominid origins to the dispersal of modern humans across the globe. Represents an accessibl...

Our understanding of locomotor evolution in anthropoid primates has been limited to those taxa for which good postcranial fossil material and appropriate modern analogues are available. We report the results of an analysis of semicircular canal size variation in 16 fossil anthropoid species dating from the Late Eocene to the Late Miocene, and use t...

In 1871, Darwin famously opined, "In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more pro...

Sivapithecus is a Miocene great ape from South Asia that is orangutan-like cranially but is distinctive postcranially. Work by others shows that the humerus resembles large terrestrial cercopithecoids proximally and suspensory hominoids distally, but most functional interpretations nevertheless situate Sivapithecus in an arboreal setting. We presen...

In the past 20 years, new discoveries of fossil apes from the Miocene have transformed our ideas about the timing, geography, and causes of the evolution of the African apes and humans. Darwin predicted that the common ancestor of African apes and humans would be found in Africa. Yet the majority of fossil great apes are from Europe and Asia. I bri...

IntroductionThe Earliest CatarrhinesThe HominoideaExpansion to EurasiaThe CercopithecoideaSummaryReferences

Darwin famously opined that the most likely place of origin of the common ancestor of African apes and humans is Africa, given the distribution of its liv-ing descendents. But it is infrequently recalled that immediately afterwards, Darwin, in his typically thorough and cautious style, noted that a fossil ape from Europe, Dryopithecus, may instead...

We describe a scaphoid and two capitates from the late Miocene site of Rudabánya, Hungary using qualitative and quantitative comparisons to a large sample of hominoid, cercopithecoid, and platyrrhine primates. The scaphoid (RUD 202) is not fused to the os centrale and in this way is like most primates other than African apes and humans (hominines)....

Phalangeal curvature has frequently been used as a proxy indicator of fossil hominoid and hominin positional behavior and locomotor adaptations, both independently and within the context of broader discussions of the postcranium as a whole. This study used high-resolution polynomial curve fitting (HR-PCF) to measure the shaft curvature of fragmenta...

Thorpe et al. (Reports, 1 June 2007, p. 1328) concluded that human bipedalism evolved from a type of bipedal posture they observed in extant orangutans with seemingly human-like extended knees. However, humans share knuckle-walking characters with African apes that are absent in orangutans. These are most parsimoniously explained by positing a knuc...

There is much debate on the definitions of homoplasy and homology, and on how to spot them among character states used in a phylogenetic analysis. Many advocate what I call a "processual approach," in which information on genetics, development, function, or other criteria help a priori in identifying two character states as homologous or homoplasti...

Fusion between the os centrale and the scaphoid has played a central role in many functional and phylogenetic interpretations of hominoid evolution. In particular, scaphoid-centrale fusion shared among African apes and humans has been interpreted as an adaptation in knuckle-walkers, an exaptation in hominins, and has been offered as evidence for a...

Hominoids, or taxa identified as hominoids, are known from much of Africa, Asia, and Europe since the Late Oligocene. The earliest taxa, from Africa, resemble extant hominoids but share with them mainly primitive characters. Middle and Late Miocene taxa are clearly hominoids, and by the end of the Middle Miocene most can be attributed to either the...

The First Human. The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors. By Ann GIbbons. Doubleday, New York, 2006. 341 pp. $26, C$37. ISBN 0- 385-51226-0. Highlighting recent findings, the author provides a popular account of the earliest fossil hominins and the competition among the scientists involved in the discoveries.

Human Evolution is a contentious topic. Understanding the human evolutionary past is complex enough; predicting the future of human evolution is nearly impossible. However, we can reconstruct events that led to the evolution of characteristics that have contributed to our success, and may hasten our extinction.

Curvatures characteristic of particular skeletal ele- ments have long been used as a proxy indicator of func- tion. Although curvature quantification methods are most commonly associated with the analysis of phalan- geal curvature (Susman, 1979; Stern and Susman, 1983; Susman et al., 1984; Rose, 1986; Susman, 1988; Hamrick et al., 1995; Jungers et...

The sample of Anapithecus from Rudabánya, Hungary, is remarkable in preserving a large number of immature individuals. We used perikymata counts, measurements of root length and cuspal enamel thickness, and observations of the sequence of tooth germs that cross match specific developmental stages in Anapithecus to construct the first composite pict...

Sivapithecus and Dryopithecus are well-described Miocene hominids (great apes and humans), both known since the 19th century. Over the years these genera have been combined into one (Dryopithecus) or separated up to the subfamily level. Each have been dismissed as interesting side branches, hailed as direct ancestors, or recognized as sister clades...