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Anatomy, Function, and Evolution of the Primate Hand Musculature

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The Evolution of the Primate Hand

Part of the book series: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects ((DIPR))

Abstract

The musculature responsible for movement of the hand has been a topic of choice among anatomists, biological anthropologists, clinicians, and other students of the human body. While comparative anatomists have been preoccupied in establishing hand muscle homologies and documenting differences between species, clinical anatomists aimed at uncovering how muscles produce complex movements of the hand. This multidisciplinary perspective using comparative, functional, and even clinical approaches is recurrent in the writings of Frederic Wood Jones and John Napier on the hand musculature. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive background on the hand musculature of primates while preserving this multidisciplinary theme. The chapter has three main sections: (1) summary of the basic organization and homologies of the musculature of the human hand, (2) comparison of major differences in hand musculature between primates and other pentadactyl mammals, and (3) suggestions for areas of future research on the hand musculature of primates. The functional roles of selected hand muscles are briefly presented throughout the chapter.

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Acknowledgments

P.L. is grateful to the curators and staff of the Duke Lemur Center and Edmonton Valley Zoo for facilitating access to some of the nonhuman primate and nonprimate specimens used for this chapter, as well as the Department of Surgery (Division of Anatomy) at the University of Alberta for providing access to human specimens and laboratory facilities. R.D.’s work was funded by a Howard University College of Medicine start-up package. Tracy Kivell, Brian Richmond, and Daniel Schmitt read an earlier version of this chapter and provided very insightful comments. The groundbreaking work of Frederic Wood Jones and John Napier on the primate hand greatly inspired our chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Anatomy, Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, 5-05A Medical Sciences Building, Edmonton, AB, Canada, T6G 2H7

    Pierre Lemelin

  2. Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, Howard University, Washington, DC, 20059, USA

    Rui Diogo

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  1. Pierre Lemelin
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  2. Rui Diogo
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Correspondence to Pierre Lemelin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary An, Leipzig, Germany

    Tracy L. Kivell

  2. Division of Anatomy Department of Surgery Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Pierre Lemelin

  3. Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, USA

    Brian G. Richmond

  4. Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University , Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Daniel Schmitt

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Lemelin, P., Diogo, R. (2016). Anatomy, Function, and Evolution of the Primate Hand Musculature. In: Kivell, T., Lemelin, P., Richmond, B., Schmitt, D. (eds) The Evolution of the Primate Hand. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3646-5_7

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