Reconstructing the Diet and Paleoecology of Plio-Pleistocene Cercopithecoides Williamsi From Sterkfontein, South Africa

Multiproxy approach to reconstruct fossil primate feeding behavior: Case study for macaque from the Plio-Pleistocene site Guefaït-4.2 (eastern Morocco)

“…The extant L. albigena and C. atys species and the fossil M. cf. sylvanus have puncture pits and gouges, which is a distinctive microwear feature of hard-object feeders (Godfrey et al, 2004;Semprebon et al, 2004;Williams and Geissler, 2014). Both Cercocebus and Lophocebus have thicker enamel compared to other primate groups, which allows both genera to rely on hard foods throughout the year (McGraw et al, 2012).…”

Reconstructing the Dietary Signal of the Primate Taxon Cercopithecoides williamsi from the Plio-Pleistocene Caves of South Africa

“…Furthermore, it exhibits a broad intraorbital pillar, which is a known characteristic of paleotropical folivorous monkeys of the Colobinae family. Cercopithecoides williamsi has been characterized as a primarily terrestrial animal from postcranial fragments from East Africa and its heavy dental wear, which suggests the ingestion of grit in its diet, suggestive of terrestriality (Williams and Geissler, 2014). For the purposes of corroborating or contradicting previous dietary reconstructions, six dental casts of Cercopithecoides williamsi were examined and compared with specimens from nonhuman extant primate species with known diets.…”

“…Observations of these dental microwear features were taken twice within an ocular reticle (0.04 mm x 0.04 mm) and averaged as a standard sampling strategy Semprebon et al, 2004;Williams & Patterson, 2010;Williams & Holmes, 2011;Williams and Geissler, 2014). These raw averages of feature occurrence were compiled into a dataset for each specimen and analyzed statistically using least Squares Means, Analyses of Variance, and Tukey's post-hoc tests of significance to detect significant signals in the dataset.…”