NEW CATARRHINE PHALANGES FROM RUDABANYA (NORTHEASTERN HUNGARY) AND THE PROBLEM OF PARALLELISM AND CONVERGENCE IN HOMINOID POSTCRANIAL MORPHOLOGY

Eight new manual and pedal phalangeal specimens from the Miocene catarrhine locality of Rudabanya are described. Four can be allocated to Anapithecus , a large pliopithecid, and four to Dryopithecus, a primitive hominid. The functional and comparative anatomy of the Anapithecus specimens supports previous work on the phalanges of this taxon. The four Dryopithecus specimens are the first to be described for this taxon. The functional anatomy of these specimens supports and enhances previous interpretations of Dryopithecus positional behavior based primarily on elbow morphology. Dryopithecus is seen as a relatively generalized suspensory arboreal quadruped with a powerful grasping pollex, lacking the specializations of individual living hominoid genera. It can be reasonably proposed as close to the primitive pattern of positional behavior for great apes and humans. Anapithecus was most like Alouatta without the prehensile tail, and with a fore- and hindlimb suspensory positional behavior lacking the specialized below-branch locomotor specializations of Ateles and hylobatids. Analysis of Miocene hominoid postcrania in general and phalanges in particular suggest that ecological constraints are of primary importance in determining broad patterns of morphology, though these can be distinguished from morphology based more directly on ancestry. In addition, patterns of similarity in phalangeal morphology can be explained by a combination of convergence and parallelism, the former distinguished from the latter by the degree to which common ancestry influences the outcomes of processes that contribute to morphological change. © 1993 Academic Press. All rights reserved.