Boyer diss 2009 1046..

History of descriptive study of the plesiadapid postcranium
Plesiadapidae is known from an extensive sample of postcranial specimens that
has been building for over a century. The following is a summary of the previous studies
of plesiadapid postcranial fossils and a listing of the specimens figured and described in
each study. This section also serves to document the comparative sample employed to
assist in the description and comparative analysis of Plesiadapis cookei based on UM
87990.
Lemoine (1893) was the first to figure and mention elements of a plesiadapid
skeleton (attributable to P. tricuspidens) from near the village of Cernay-Les-Reims,
France. He noted the presence of prominent flexor sheath ridges on the proximal
phalanges.
Gregory (1920: p. 70 and Pl. XXVII) illustrated and discussed a humerus (AMNH
17379) now attributed to Nannodectes gidleyi Gingerich 1976 in his monographic
treatment of Notharctus. Gregory considered this specimen to fit a “tupaioid”
morphological pattern and referred to it as “Nothodectes.” “Nothodectes” was later
synonymized with Plesiadapis gidleyi (Simpson, 1935), which was later transferred by
Gingerich (1976) to the genus Nannodectes.
Teilhard de Chardin (1922: Pl. 1:33) figured a distal humerus belonging to P.
remensis from Cernay-Les-Reims and commented on the habitus of plesiadapids,
describing them as “sciuroid” in their ecology.
The specimen described by Gregory (1920) is part of a larger accumulation of
associated craniodental and postcranial remains originally discovered by Walter Granger
in 1916 at the “Mason Pocket locality” of the Nacimiento Formation, San Juan Basin,
255