The aim of this planning project is to assemble a collection of non-human primate skulls from animals of known life history. At the end of the planning period a sub-sample will be selected from this collection and used in a project examining the relationship between defects in non-human primate teeth and life events. The ultimate aim of this is to develop a method to recreate events in the lives of fossil humans. The select sub-sample will provide the best possible experimental sample for an adequate test of whether life history events do reliably leave indicators in the developing hard tissues of the teeth. It is essential to limit the final number of animals represented for practical reasons due to the time consuming nature of the analysis. The estimated sample to be gathered is 100, of which 50-60 would form the select sub-sample. The primary source of primate carcasses is the New Iberia Research Center in New Iberia, Louisiana. The carcasses will represent natural casualties from their non-human primate breeding program. The other source of primate carcasses is a collection of 52 frozen laboratory and zoo animals from the University of Cambridge in England.
