Hominid Adaptations and Extinctions

According to David W. Cameron, the goal of his book Hominid Adaptations and Extinctions is “to examine the evolution of ape morphological form in association with adaptive strategies and to understand what were the environmental problems facing Miocene ape groups and how these problems influenced ape adaptive strategies” (p. 4). Cameron describes himself as being “acknowledged internationally as an expert on hominid evolution” and dedicates the book to his “teachers, colleagues and friends” Peter Andrews and Colin Groves. He has participated in fieldwork at the late Miocene sites of Rudabanya (Hungary) and Pasalar (Turkey). His Ph.D. at Australian National University was devoted to “European Miocene faciodental fossils.” He has published a number of articles on Miocene hominoids, mainly in the pages of Primates, Perspectives in Human Biology, and the Journal of Comparative Human Biology. From the outset, it bears mentioning that Cameron’s use of the word hominid refers not only to humans and their ancestors but to great apes and their progenitors as well. This book is really about Miocene hominoids. The introductory chapter (pp. 1–19) lays out the author’s conceptual framework, including the classification of the Hominidae into subfamilies (Ponginae, Gorillinae, Paninae, Homininae), how the molecular clock works, and a simplified depiction of the ‘Ramapithecus’ saga. In a perversion of paleoanthropological history that is so fraught with irony that it borders on the surreal, Cameron credits David Pilbeam for our current understanding of divergence dates within the Hominoidea, including the realization that “the emergence of the earliest proto-humans from their proto-chimp cousins was proposed to be as late as 6 to 5 million years ago” (p. 5). Tertiary paleogeography and climates are reviewed, especially with respect to the demise of Paleogene prosimians at the “Grande Coupure” and the emergence of early anthropoids in the Fayum. Some of the discussion of primate evolution here is not particularly accurate or informative, including the suggestion that Amphipithecus and Qatrania closely resemble each other. Cameron places within the Proconsulidae a hodgepodge of taxa, including “Proconsul, Rangwapithecus, Turkanapithecus and the fossil small-bodied East African apes,” in essence ignoring the substantial and significant differences between Dendropithecus and Simiolus (on the one hand) and Proconsul (on the other hand) in terms of distal humerus articular morphology. The influence of Peter Andrews and Colin Groves on the author’s work is quite clear. The Miocene “Hominidae” are placed into four tribes: Afropithecini (at the base of the “hominid” radiation), Kenyapithecini (a side group), Sivapithecini (ancestral to Pongo), Dryopithecini (between