The Primate Fossil Record edited by Walter Hartwig, Cambridge, £120, ISBN 0521663156 Reviewed by Douglas Palmer
AS A club, we’re pretty select. Primates include ourselves and our biologically nearest and dearest, the monkeys and apes, their extinct fossil forms and even the odd archbishop – the name means foremost. Given to us 244 years ago by the Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, the grouping dismayed some people.
That delayed acceptance of our evolutionary links to the other primates until the late 19th century. Since then primatologists have made up for lost time, naming and describing a host of fossil primates – it’s…
