Among catarrhine primates, the evolutionary history of the colobine (leaf-eating) monkeys remains understudied. Fossil colobines are recorded from the Late Miocene onwards, and many species are represented by relatively complete material, including several partial crania and skeletons. These fossils make up a substantial portion of the known Late Miocene catarrhine record, but interpreting their significance is made difficult by the near absence of reliable phylogenetic hypotheses of the subfamily. My dissertation work reexamined the skeletal morphology and evolutionary relationships of the living and fossil colobine monkeys to contextualize their diversity and ecology. These results inform the reconstruction of the ancestral cercopithecoid, point to biogeographic pathways between Africa and Eurasia shared by other primates (including apes), and clarify the diversity of the fossil colobines over the last 12 million years.
