ABSTRACT
I first arrived in Madagascar in August 1969 to study the behavior and ecology of ringtailed and brown lemurs from an anthropological perspective. I was a Ph.D. student at Duke University at the time. After two closely related species of early hominin (Australopithecus spp.) had been found living contemporaneously, the question had arisen as to whether two related species of primates could coexist and, if so, how. So, I was to study two closely related species of lemur, the ringtailed lemur (Lemur catta) and the brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus), in southwestern Madagascar. These two species were similar in size and skeletal morphology. If you had only the bones of the two species, you would not be able to tell them apart unless you knew exactly what to look for.
