News and views New endemic platyrrhine femur from Haiti: Description and locomotor analysis Siobhán B. Cooke a, c, * , Melissa Tallman b, d a Department of Anthropology, Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 N. St., Louis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625, USA b Department of Biomedical Sciences, Grand Valley State University, Padnos Hall, Allendale, MI 49506, USA c Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, 130 Science Drive, Box 90383, Durham, NC 27708, USA d City University of New York and NYCEP, Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, 79th Street at Central Park West, New York, NY 10024, USA article info Article history: Received 14 February 2012 Accepted 17 May 2012 Available online xxx Keywords: Caribbean Three-dimensional geometric morphometrics Locomotor morphology Saimiri Introduction The Greater Antilles once harbored an endemic radiation of plat- yrrhine primates, including Antillothrix bernensis from the Dominican Republic (Rímoli, 1977; MacPhee et al., 1995; Kay et al., 2011; Rosenberger et al., 2011), Paralouatta varoni and Paralouatta marianae from Cuba (Rivero and Arredondo,1991; Horovitz and MacPhee,1999; MacPhee and Meldrum, 2006), Xenothrix mcgregori from Jamaica (Williams and Koopman, 1952; Rosenberger, 1977; MacPhee and Fleagle, 1991; MacPhee and Meldrum, 2006), and the recently named Insulacebus toussaintiana from Haiti (Cooke et al., 2011). Along with nearly 80% of the endemic mammalian fauna, these primates became extinct sometime in the last several thousand years (Morgan and Woods,1986). Here, we describe a new fossil specimen from Haiti, which is the first primate postcranial material known from the country. In 1928, Gerrit S. Miller found the first fossil evidence of an endemic platyrrhine primate on Hispaniola, in a cave near Samaná on the northeastern coast of the Dominican Republic (Miller, 1929). Since that time, a number of additional remains have been recov- ered from the eastern Dominican Republic, including numerous postcranial elements and two well-preserved crania (Kay et al., 2011; Rosenberger et al., 2011). The fossil record for Haitian primates is less complete, however. During the early 1980s, the University of Florida, Gainesville, sponsored a number of paleon- tological expeditions during which the only primate remains ever found in Haiti were discovered. They included a fragmentary mandible from the site of Trou Woch Sa Wo with a worn M 1 (MacPhee and Woods, 1982), which has now been lost, and the nearly complete primate dentition with gnathic fragments on which the description of I. toussaintiana is based (Cooke et al., 2011). Here, we add to the endemic Caribbean platyrrhine fossil record with the description and three-dimensional geometric morpho- metric analysis of a femoral specimen (UF 114717) from Haiti. UF 114717 was found at the cave siteof Trou Jean Paul (18  17 0 N, 72  17 0 W) on February 16, 1984 along with a large number of Nesophontes sp., several specimens of Solenodon sp., and the echi- myid rodent Brotomys voratus. Additional unidentified rodent remains exist as well. The assemblage is sub-recent, and the specimen, while from an extinct form, is not fully mineralized. All of the Haitian primate material is geographically confined to the Tiburon Peninsula, a biogeographically interesting region, which may have been separated from the main body of Hispaniola into the Late Quaternary (Maurrasse et al., 1982; Mann et al., 1991; Iturralde-Vinent and MacPhee, 1999). In studies of birds and amphibians (e.g., Thomas, 2000; Rimmer et al., 2006, 2010; Townsend et al., 2007), the Tiburon Peninsula has been shown to be high in endemism. Fossil description UF 114717 is a nearly complete left femur of an immature indi- vidual, missing the distal epiphysis. The proximal epiphyses between the head and greater trochanter and diaphysis are fused (Fig. 1). The femur has a large round head with a short femoral neck and a slightly proximally placed fovea capitis. The articular surface extends partially onto the posterior surface of the neck of the femur. Along the posterior aspect of the femur, between the femoral neck and intertrochanteric fossa, this specimen has a small boss that provided the attachment for the external rotators of the hip including obturator externus and obturator internus. This feature is common to all extant platyrrhines with the exception of Cebus (Ford, 1988). The greater trochanter is of approximately equal height to the head, and a deep trochanteric fossa is outlined by the flange of the greater trochanter and the intertrochanteric line. The * Corresponding author. Department of Anthropology, Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 N. St., Louis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625, USA. E-mail addresses: siobhancooke@gmail.com, sc249@duke.edu (S.B. Cooke), LTallman@gmail.com (M. Tallman). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Human Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol 0047-2484/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.05.008 Journal of Human Evolution xxx (2012) 1e8 Please cite this article in press as: Cooke, S.B., Tallman, M., New endemic platyrrhine femur from Haiti: Description and locomotor analysis, Journal of Human Evolution (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2012.05.008