ABSTRACT
The higher primates represented in the New World by the Ceboidea, or New World Monkeys, are the major group of Primates in the western hemisphere, and the only group to survive. Higher primates as a group are distinguished from prosimians and plesiadapiform primates by a variety of cranial and dental characters. In most groups of living higher primates, incisors, canines, premolars, and molar teeth are all present and each tooth group possesses a fairly distinctive morphology. The morphology of higher primate premolars varies considerably, from a caniniform puncturing tooth, to a molariform tooth with a differentiated trigon (id) and talon (id) or a bicuspid condition. In higher primates, the frontal, jugal and maxillary bones combine to form a thin bony septum of variable completeness between orbital and the temporal fossa, a condition known as post-orbital closure.
