The Primate Ear Bone Collection of the University of Turin: Revision and Improvement.

The interest in the auditory ossicles of the non-human Primates and Man has intensified and developed especially since the 1960s, thanks to the works of Masali (1964, 1971) and Masali and Chiarelli (1965a, b, 1967). The morphometric analyses of these cranial elements in Primates, also with multivariate analysis techniques, have revealed their taxonomic and phylogenetic usefulness; subsequent researches have proposed the use of these structures in characterizing ancient human populations with the evaluation of their morphological distance (Siori et al., 1987; Masali e Micheletti Cremasco, 2006). The Primate ear bone collection, preserved at the Department of Animal and Human Biology, University of Turin, has recently been reviewed and increased with new specimens. A morphometric analysis of the revised collection has been performed. During the review there was evidence of pathological cases in Cercopithecinae, Colobinae and Callithricidae, which are currently being studied.