Rooneyia, postorbital closure, and the beginnings of the age of anthropoidea

Abstract

In the Age of Anthropoidea, the higher primates came to dominate primate evolution — at least since the Oligocene and probably even before that. In his research on the origins of anthropoids during the 1970s, F.S. Szalay set the stage for the present paper in three ways: he established its overarching phylogenetic framework; he promoted a methodology that emphasized the integration of phylogenetics and adaptational analysis in the reconstruction of evolutionary history; and, thankfully for us, he made a key morphological observation that produced the line of inquiry that this paper has followed up.