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Patterns, Variability, and Flexibility of Hand Posture During Locomotion in Primates

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The Evolution of the Primate Hand

Part of the book series: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects ((DIPR))

Abstract

Primates are defined, in part, by the presence of a grasping hand that couples primitive anatomy with exceptional neuromuscular dexterity. This arrangement is maintained across the evolutionary history of primates, and is often seen as one of the key features that allow primates to make fluid transitions from one substrate to another, make kinematic adjustments with changes in speed and gait, and to make biomechanical adjustments throughout ontogeny. This chapter surveys the exceptional diversity of primate hand positions across locomotor modes, and provides a perspective on the organization of hand positioning based on underlying biomechanical similarities. Across primates, hand positions are highly variable, and multiple solutions to same locomotor challenges are observed. This mechanical flexibility appears to be an adaptive feature of the primate hand, and suggests much of the success of the primate radiation has to do with maintaining generalized ‘cheiridial compromise’ that allows locomotor versatility.

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Acknowledgments

A review chapter like this develops only as a result of extensive conversations with colleagues, collaborators, and friends. The topic of the evolution of the hand remains a deep and profound one in our field, and we have discussed some of the ideas here with many of our colleagues in the recent and more distant past. We thank the following people (listed in a sort of temporal order) for discussions about the ideas concerning functional anatomy of the hand presented in this chapter: Susan Larson, Jack Stern, Scott McGraw, Chris Wall, Liza Shapiro, Rich Kay, Matt Cartmill, Jean Turnquist, John Cant, Jandy Hanna, David Raichlen, Chris Vinyard, Laura Johnson, Karyne Rabey, Charlotte Miller, Steve Churchill, Doug Boyer, and Anne-Claire Fabre. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Mike Rose whose many articles on this topic and wise advice and opinions helped shape much of our thinking on hand anatomy. We are especially grateful to Pierre Lemelin, Tracy Kivell, and Brian Richmond for heavy and constructive editing of this chapter. More importantly, we are grateful to them for the many and lengthy discussions about this chapter and other issues concerning the evolution of the hand that we had over the past 3 years. Much of the data described here come from studies carried out by one or more of us at SUNY Stony Brook (laboratory of Jack Stern and Susan Larson), The University of Texas at Austin (laboratory of Jody Jensen), Monkey Jungle, and the Duke Lemur Center. We thank all the faculty and staff there in general and specifically Marianne Crisci, Sian Evans, David Brewer, Bill Hess, and Erin Ehmke.

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  1. Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA

    Daniel Schmitt, Angel Zeininger & Michael C. Granatosky

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  3. Michael C. Granatosky
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Correspondence to Daniel Schmitt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary An, Leipzig, Germany

    Tracy L. Kivell

  2. Division of Anatomy Department of Surgery Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Pierre Lemelin

  3. Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, USA

    Brian G. Richmond

  4. Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University , Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Daniel Schmitt

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Schmitt, D., Zeininger, A., Granatosky, M.C. (2016). Patterns, Variability, and Flexibility of Hand Posture During Locomotion in Primates. In: Kivell, T., Lemelin, P., Richmond, B., Schmitt, D. (eds) The Evolution of the Primate Hand. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3646-5_13

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