A COMPARISON OF MOLAR MORPHOLOGY FROM EXTANT CERCOPITHECID MONKEYS AND PLIOCENE PARAPAPIO FROM MAKAPANSGAT, SOUTH AFRICA USING ELLIPTICAL FOURIER ANALYSIS
To determine whether the size and shape of Parapapio molars are similar to closely related cercopithecid taxa including Cercocebus and Papio and different from more distantly related Colobus, three first permanent maxillary molar molds of Parapapio (MP77 broomi, MP221 whitei, and MP223 whitei) were compared to Cercocebus agilis (n = 11), Papio anubis (n = 10) and Colobus angolensis (n = 11) using buccolingual and mesiodistal lengths, occlusal area, and elliptical Fourier analysis. PC1, accounting for 35% of the variance, polarizes Parapapio and Colobus at opposite extremes from the other taxa, whereas PC2, explaining 19.76%, separates Colobus from extant cercopithecines. PC3 (13.92% of the variance) separates Cercocebus and Colobus from other genera and each other with minor overlap. In terms of shape, Parapapio resembles Papio and Cercocebus, but not particularly so and exhibits variation in lingual aspects of molar morphology where it resembles Colobus
