Internet Exercises

Chapter 5: Fossil Primates

1. John Tuzo Wilson was a famous Canadian who developed the concept of plate tectonics and continental drift, building on the ideas of Wegener in the early 20th century. Read the article on Wilson located at http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=
   ArchivedFeatures&Params=A262 . How does continental drift explain the distribution of fossil and modern primates?
   
   
2. As a Canadian graduate student at the University of Alberta, Jonathan Perry was interested in learning about the diets of fossil primates as he worked towards his Masters. There was one problem…how do you reconstruct how a fossil chewed millions of years ago? Jonathan developed a machine to simulate the chewing action of fossil primates. See an interview with him here: http://www.innovationalberta.com/article.php?articleid=59 . How do you think this type of research could be expanded to aid other research problems? Can you think about other applications of this technique?