Hominoid Evolution and Climatic Change in Europe: Volume 2: Phylogeny of the Neogene Hominoid Primates of Eurasia

What is the place of Europe in the origin of humankind? While our earliest human ancestors may have come out of Africa, many of our more recent ancestors and those of other primates left their fossil remains in Europe and the Near East. Hominoid primates including Dryopithecus in Spain and Hungary, Oreopithecus in Italy, and Ouranopithecus in Greece flourished in the Miocene, approximately 10-7 million years ago. This volume examines these and other hominoid fossils found in Eurasia and discusses what we can learn using biostratigraphic and ecological frameworks. In addition, new methods of analyzing and visualizing fossil hominoids are explored, including CT-based and computer-assisted virtual reconstruction of fossils to allow three-dimensional images of external and internal morphology of even fragmentary or distorted fossils. This volume will be invaluable for practicing palaeoanthropologists and palaeontologists regardless of specialty.