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Boyer diss 2009 1046..

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Jenkins (1974) found that Tupaia glis utilizes sprawled limb postures and relies on<br />

abduction-adduction (instead of flexion and extension) movements in its hind limbs to a<br />

significant degree: Tupaia glis is a pronograde scansorialist, not an orthograde<br />

arborealist. However, the hind limb of Tupaia does not resemble that of P. cookei very<br />

much in features that would seem to have promoted transverse plane mobility in P.<br />

cookei. Furthermore, the hind limb postures that Jenkins (1974) illustrates for Tupaia<br />

still show the femur to be more sagittally oriented and mobile than suggested in the<br />

reconstructions presented above for P. cookei. The hind limb of the treeshrew<br />

Ptilocercus does resemble that of P. cookei in many respects (Sargis, 2002b). Ptilocercus<br />

is arboreally committed, engaging in vertical clinging and climbing behaviors (Le Gros<br />

Clark, 1926). So it seems reasonable to conclude that Ptilocercus limits its movements to<br />

a transverse plane even more than does Tupaia (although no data are available), that this<br />

helps Ptilocercus locomote in arboreal settings, and that P. cookei moved more like<br />

Ptilocercus than Tupaia.<br />

The reduced ability for plantarflexion in plesiadapids relative to treeshrews and<br />

many primates (see above) begs the question of how vertical descent postures could have<br />

been accomplished in plesiadapiforms. In fact, Beard (1989) suggested plesiadapiforms<br />

were not effective at descending vertical supports, and suggested gliding behaviors might<br />

have represented an alternative means of descending from tree canopies. However,<br />

assembling the hind limb of P. cookei with an abducted, extended femur, a knee flexed at<br />

90º, an astragalotibial joint plantarflexed by 90º, and a fully inverted<br />

astragalocalcalcaneal joint (Fig. 4.51) shows an approximation of a limb posture that<br />

could be used for vertical descents. It should be noted that further inversion of the foot<br />

383

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