Anatomy, Comparative; Embryology, Human; Evolution; Human beings -- Origin
On the other hand, all the American apes have an additional pre-molar
in each half of the jaw. They have six molars above and below on each
side, or thirty-six teeth altogether. This characteristic difference
between the eastern and western apes has been so faithfully inherited
that it is very instructive for us. It is true that there seems to be
an exception in the case of a small family of South American apes. The
small silky apes (Arctopitheca or Hapalidae), which include the
tamarin (Midas) and the brush-monkey (Jacchus), have only five molars
in each half of the jaw (instead of six), and so seem to be nearer to
the eastern apes. But it is found, on closer examination, that they
have three premolars, like all the western apes, and that only the
last molar has been lost. Hence the apparent exception really confirms
the above distinction.
Of the other features in which the two groups of apes differ, the
structure of the nose is particularly instructive and conspicuous. All
the eastern apes have the same type of nose as man--a comparatively
narrow partition between the two halves, so that the nostrils run
downwards. In some of them the nose protrudes as far as in man, and
has the same characteristic structure. We have already alluded to the
curious long-nosed apes, which have a long, finely-curved nose. Most
of the eastern apes have, it is true, rather flat noses, like, for
instance, the white-nosed monkey (Figure 2.276); but the nasal
partition is thin and narrow in them all. The American apes have a
different type of nose. The partition is very broad and thick at the
bottom, and the wings of the nostrils are not developed, so that they
point outwards instead of downwards. This difference in the form of
the nose is so constantly inherited in both groups that the apes of
the New World are called "flat-nosed" (Platyrrhinae), and those of the
Old World "narrow-nosed" (Catarrhinae). The bony passage of the ear
(at the bottom of which is the tympanum) is short and wide in all the
Platyrrhines, but long and narrow in all the Catarrhines; and in man
this difference also is significant.
This division of the apes into Platyrrhines and Catarrhines, on the
ground of the above hereditary features, is now generally admitted in
zoology, and receives strong support from the geographical
distribution of the two groups in the east and west. It follows at
once, as regards the phylogeny of the apes, that two divergent lines
proceeded from the common stem-form of the ape-order in the early
Tertiary period, one of which spread over the Old, the other over the
New, World. It is certain that all the Platyrrhines come of one stock,
and also all the Catarrhines; but the former are phylogenetically
older, and must be regarded as the stem-group of the latter.
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