Electronic supplementary material.zip

This study is based on two databases collected from a broad literature review: <strong>1</strong>) Primate fossil locations (please see electronic supplementary material) discovered in the Late Miocene (11.6 – 5.3 mya), Pliocene (5.3 – 2.58 mya), Early Pleistocene (2.58 – 0.77 mya), Middle Pleistocene (0.77– 0.129 mya) and Late Pleistocene (0.129 – 0.0117 mya). However, as the fossil sites of the catarrhines in the Pliocene are very scarce, especially regarding the Pongidae and Hylobatidae(Harrison, 2016), the reconstruction of the dispersal scenarios focused on the Pleistocene. <strong>2</strong>) Pongidae was extinct in the Late Pleistocene, so later information in the Holocene comes from historical geographic distributions of the existing Colobinae (from 1304), Cercopithecinae (from 1175), and Hylobatidae (from 1182): a remarkable 800-year period. Such information is from the records of Chinese local governmental historical archives, annals, journals, and books; more details have been given in our previous publications: (Li et al., 2020; Li et al., 2002). Public records categorize catarrhines into four different groups: 1) gibbons, called “Yuan” in Chinese, are characterized by long upper limbs, slim body structure, unique calls, and acrobatic behavior (Zhang, 2015; Zhou and Zhang, 2013). Their records appeared since the Zhou Dynasty (1027-221 BC) in art, mainly in paintings (Geissmann, 2008), and other social services, such as funeral services, being buried with the dead (Vogel, 2018); 2) snub-nosed monkeys (<em>Rhinopithecus</em>) with up-turned nostrils and sturdy body structure; 3) leaf-eating monkeys (<em>Presbytis</em>, <em>Trachypithecus</em>, <em>Pygathrix,</em> and <em>Semnopithecus</em>), showing slender body structure with typical arboreal lifestyle and special folivorous diets; and 4) macaques that are primarily terrestrial and morphologically quite different from the other groups (Li et al., 2020). Among the four, 1) belongs to the Hylobatidae (gibbons), containing Nomascus (4 species), <em>Hylobates</em> (1 species), and <em>Hoolock</em> (1 species); 2) and 3) are classified as the Colobinae (colobines), including snub-nosed monkeys (<em>Rhinopithecus</em>, five species) and langurs (<em>Trachypithecus, </em>six species; <em>Pygathrix, </em>one species; and <em>Semnopithecus, </em>one species); and 4) is regarded as the Cercopithecinae (<em>Macaca</em>)<em>,</em> consisting eight species (Li et al., 2018).