Hard Tissue Correlates of Growth Rate Variation in Primates

This dissertation project explores the links between the ultimate drivers of variation in primate growth rates and their proximate (i.e., hormonal) underpinnings via a hard-tissue structure, the sella turcica. In doing so, it proposes a novel, non-destructive method for estimating individual somatic growth rates, which are presently difficult to infer in the hominin and primate fossil records. It also investigates the inter- and intraspecific effects of ecology and environment on the growth rates of extant primates.The ultimate causes, or selective pressures, shaping growth rate have long been the subject of anthropological research, but the proximate mechanisms that underpin variation in growth rate are less well studied. At the proximate level, somatic growth is the direct result of hormones produced by endocrine glands such as the pituitary. This project builds upon the relationship between the size of the pituitary, which is positively correlated with growth rate across mammalian taxa, and the sella turcica, the bony structure within which the pituitary gland is housed. By pairing 3D cranial morphology data with growth data from a well-studied primate population, this research tests whether the size of the nonhuman primate sella turcica reflects somatic growth rate. It also assesses how aspects of ecology and demography (i.e., ultimate causes such as resource availability, food quality, extrinsic mortality) relate to somatic growth rates both within the study population and across a comparative sample of 51 extant primate species. It further explores whether these ecological variables also explain variation in relative sella turcica size; together, the complementary components of this dissertation contribute to a better understanding of primate growth.