**2026 Textbook and Academic Authors Association (TAA) McGuffey Longevity Award Winner**
Primate Adaptation and Evolution, Fourth Edition provides key features of extant families and references to more detailed texts. The book sets the scene and creates space for a thorough updating of exciting developments in primate paleontology and a reconstruction through early hominid species of our own human origins. This updated version covers recent developments in primate paleontology, the latest taxonomy, and includes new visuals, including helpful illustrations and evolutionary trees. It is an ideal text for undergraduate and post-graduate students studying the evolution and functional ecology of primates and early fossil hominids.The book retains its grounding in the extant primate groups as the best way to understand the fossil trail and evolution of these modern forms. However, this coverage is now more streamlined, referring to the many new and excellent books on living primate ecology and adaptation - a field that has burgeoned since this book's first publication.
- Includes over 200 new illustrations and revised evolutionary trees
- Offers the latest information on primate physiology, isotopes and genetics
- Discusses life history and dispersal patterns among species
- Provides new genera and data on the behavior and ecology of New World monkeys
- Presents the newest fossil discoveries, including platyrrhine and primitive catarrhine origins
John G. Fleagle is a primatologist whose research combines field studies and functional morphological analysis. He is interested in the adaptive radiation of primates during the last 56 million years. He has conducted paleobiological research in Egypt, Argentina, and Ethiopia and has studied living primates in Malaysia, Surinam, Brazil and Madagascar. Dr. Fleagle is a MacArthur Fellow.
Andrea Baden is a primatologist whose research combines traditional field work with laboratory (genetic, hormone, nutrition) analyses to answer broad evolutionary questions about primate social and reproductive strategies. Her research focuses primarily on Malagasy strepsirrhines, including one of the only long-term studies of wild ruffed lemurs.
Chris Gilbert is a primate morphologist and paleontologist broadly interested in primate evolution over the last 66 million years, with an emphasis on craniodental anatomy and phylogenetic systematics. He has conducted paleontological fieldwork in North America, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and India, as well as behavioral research on extant primates in Thailand and the Duke Lemur Center.
