Titre |
Sexual dimorphism in large bodied primates the case of the subfossil lemurs. |
Détenteur du document |
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Titre de la série |
American Journal of Physical Anthropology. |
Résumé |
Large body size has evolved repeatedly in the order Primates, not merely among anthropoids but also among prosimians. Whereas high degrees of sexual size dimorphism characterize many of the large-bodied anthropoids, this is not the case for extinct large-bodied lemurs. This paper uses finite mixture analysis and other techniques to ascertain just how much skull length dimorphism might be embedded in the generally unimodal distributions of skull lengths of giant extinct lemurs from single localities, and then compares these results with known skull length dimorphisms in extant lemurs and large-bodied catarrhines. We show that low levels of skull length sexual dimorphism (or none at all) characterize subfossil lemurs, and we explore several possible explanations for this phenomenon. |