(Introduction to the Primates is a comprehensive but compa...)
Introduction to the Primates is a comprehensive but compact guide to the long evolutionary history of the world’s prosimians, monkeys, and apes, and to the much shorter history of humankind’s interactions with them, from our earliest recorded observations to the severe threats we now pose to their survival.
Daris Swindler provides a detailed description of the major primate groups and their environments, from the smallest lemurs of Madagascar to the gorillas of central Africa. He compares and contrasts the primate species, looking at each with a specific anatomical focus. The range of diversity emerges as the particular characteristics of the species becomes increasingly distinct. Swindler also considers primate behavior and its close connections with environment and evolutionary differences. His account of 65 million years of successful adaptation and evolution demonstrates the drama of paleontology as evidence accrues and gaps in the history of primate evolution gradually close.
(Primate Dentition provides a comparative dental anatomy o...)
Primate Dentition provides a comparative dental anatomy of living non-human primates that brings together information from many disciplines to present the most useful and comprehensive database possible in one consolidated text. The core of the book consists of comparative morphological and metrical descriptions with analyses, reference tables, and illustrations of the permanent dentitions of 85 living primate species to establish a baseline for future investigations. The volume also discusses dental microstructure and its importance in understanding taxonomic relationships between species, data on deciduous dentitions, prenatal dental development and ontogenetic processes, and material to aid age estimation and life history studies.
Daris Ray Swindler was an American anthropologist. He was the author of nearly two hundred books, monographs, and scientific articles.
Background
Daris Ray Swindler was born on August 13, 1925, in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States to George Raymond and Minnie Mildred (McElroy) Swindler. He grew up in coal country during the Great Depression and was well acquainted with the faces of poverty and hardship.
Education
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Daris attempted to enlist in the United States Navy. His parents did not wish this for him, and so he waited until 1943, when, at age 18, he could volunteer. Trained as a gunner’s mate, he was assigned as Naval Armed Guard to the U.S. Merchant Marine, sailing with and helping to defend fuel tankers in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. This was a harrowing experience, and years later he would express his preference for transporting diesel fuel over gasoline. Daris was discharged in 1946, having seen much of the world and experienced its great diversity.
Education for servicemen and women returning from World War II might be more appropriately termed ‘‘continuing education,’’ for life’s most important lessons had already been learned. This was surely true for Daris. Biology was not Daris’s first love, perhaps because of his teachers’ great emphasis on botany. However, with the reading of Henry Fairfield Osborn’s Men of the Old Stone Age, he began to embrace the possibility of anthropology as a career. He received a Bachelor of Arts in zoology and geology from West Virginia University in 1949, then continued with graduate work, earning a Master of Arts in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1952 and Doctor of Philosophy in anthropology in 1959. At Penn, he was associated with the anthropologist and author Loren Eisley, and completed his doctorate under Wilton Marion Krogman. Here began Daris’s interests indental anthropology, growth and development, and forensic anthropology.
A long-time professor at the University of Washington, Swindler also taught human anatomy at Cornell University Medical College (now known as Weill Medical College of Cornell University), at the University of South Carolina and Michigan State University.
Swindler assisted police in many criminal cases, notably the searches for serial killers Gary Ridgway (a.k.a. the Green River Killer) and Ted Bundy.
Swindler was generally acknowledged as a leading primate expert, having specialized in the study of fossilized teeth; his book An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy is a standard work in the field. According to Stein, His collection of primate tooth castings has been donated to New York University and is being digitally recorded in 3D for web use giving students all over the world access to the collection.
Swindler published several books. He traveled the world from an archaeological dig in the Valley of the Kings to Easter Island. Just prior to Swindler's death in December 2007, the University of Washington established a graduate fellowship in his name.