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Y Coppens

Publications and source records attributed to Y Coppens.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Substrate optimization in nut cracking by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella).

We conducted an experiment to examine the effect of substrate on the nut-cracking behavior of a group of semicaptive capuchin monkeys. We wanted to determine whether tufted capuchin monkeys were selective in choosing the substrate on which they pound nuts, and whether the choice of substrate affected the outcome. Eight adult females and eight juveniles were provided with nuts in the outdoor facility. We found that 1) all adult females and three young capuchins succeeded in cracking nuts; 2) they preferred the hardest substrates (concrete and stone); 3) there is a link between the substrate and the amount of time needed to crack a nut; 4) most young capuchins used various substrates, some of which were inadequate, in a haphazard manner; and 5) there are different forms of nut cracking. We conclude that adult capuchins choose the hardest substrates, and that these substrates support efficient cracking.

Animals↗
PubMed1995

The first australopithecine 2,500 kilometres west of the Rift Valley (Chad)

The first sites with Pliocene and Pleistocene mammals west of the Rift Valley in Central Africa in northern Chad were reported in 1959 (ref. 1), and documented the presence of mixed savannah and woodland habitats. Further sites and a probable Homo erectus cranio-facial fragment were subsequently discovered. In 1993 a survey of Pliocene and Pleistocene formations in the Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Province of Chad (B.E.T.) led to the discovery of 17 new sites in the region of Bahr el Ghazal (classical Arabic for River of the Gazelles) near Koro Toro. One site, KT 12 (15 degrees 58'10"N, 18 degrees 52'46"E) yielded an australopithecine mandible associated with a fauna biochronologically estimated to be 3.0-3.5 Myr old. Australopithecine species described since 1925 are known from southern Africa and from sites spread along the eastern Rift Valley from Tanzania to Ethiopia (Fig. 1). This new find from Chad, which is most similar in morphology to Australopithecus afarensis, documents the presence of an early hominid a considerable distance, 2,500 km, west of the Rift Valley.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

[The anatomical and functional origin of the first bipedalism].

This communication is the synthesis of ten years of researchers of comparative anatomy done by the author or under his control on fossil Hominids, three million years old, found by his expeditions in Eastern Ethiopia. It brings, for the first time, the odd picture of a skeleton adapted to arboricolism and bipedalism together. The rachis has already the curves of an erect being but with at least a thoraco-lumbar cyphosis a bit more elongated than in our own rachis; the pelvis is wide and shallow like the pelvis of a biped but with many particular features like the width of the iliac wings, a great biacetabular diameter, the small size of the coxo-femoral joints; the femur is short with a special long neck, a very oblique diaphysis like in Man and an intercondylar fossa, deep and wide like in chimp; the tibia is also short, its spines very tight in such a way that the knee shows a great laxity. The foot is short and flat, with an abducted hallux and long curved toes; the scapular, elbow and wrist joints show, at the opposite of the knee joint, a great solidity, but both characteristics of the hind and fore-limb joints are not in contradiction: they are, as in chimpanzees again, functionally adapted to climbing and moving in the trees where are needed firm grip of the hands as well as mobility of the knee and of the foot. It seems that the early Australopithecine' bipedalism was original, different from ours and quite instable: short steps were necessary to maintain equilibrium as well as a strong rotation of the pelvis around the vertebral axis (50 to 60 degrees on each side). This analysis is then demonstrating a real evolution of bipedalism which was not at all, at once, the bipedalism of Homo sapiens, as it has been claimed. This paper is also showing that bipedalism anatomic organization is taking place from the pelvis to the foot and not the other way round. At last, as we have found, also in Ethiopia, stone-tools more than three million years old in association with Australopithecus, it seems that the very first made tools were the invention of prehumans who did not have yet the hands completely free from locomotion.

Anatomy, Comparative↗
PubMed1977

[Morphological evolution of the first lower premolar of some higher primates].

Recent discoveries in Africa, in Asia and in Europe of new fossils attributed to the Ramapithecinae and/or to the Australopithecinae seem to point out the monocuspid origin of Man's first lower premolar the bicuspidy of the Gigantopithecidae, the Oreopithecidae' and the Hominidae' first lower premolar, reached at different geological ages, give an example of parallel evolution.

Animals↗