Chris Beard in the Annual Review of Anthropology

Chris Beard’s article, “Out of Asia: Anthropoid Origins and the Colonization of Africa,” was recently published in the Annual Review of Anthropology. Previous research has attempted to explain the dispersed geographic distribution of anthropoid primates by hypothesizing tectonic rifts between South America and Africa as the cause, but Beard points out that those predictions conflict with the chronology and the topology of anthropoid evolution. In this article, Beard identifies and discusses biological and geological factors that support the assertion that the cause of dispersal was the crossing of marine barriers by early monkeys on natural rafts. To read the full article, please click here.