In 1956 K. D. Jorgensen wrote The Deciduous Dentition. A Descriptive and Comparative Anatomical Study. This still remains one of the most thorough and comprehensive studies of the human deciduous dentition. There is nothing, however, in the literature on the deciduous dentition of non-human primates that approaches the magnitude of this work. The present chapter is not intended to fill in the void; this would require a book in itself. Unfortunately, the present data base is generally small for most species since the main purpose of the original collection was to cast the permanent dentition. A few casts, however, were made of the deciduous teeth of several anthropoid species, and considering the limited number of investigations of non-human primate deciduous teeth it was thought appropriate to include this chapter. There were no casts made of the deciduous teeth of the prosimians. In both morphological and metric analyses sexes are combined since in many cases the sex is not known, and there is little if any indication of significant sex differences.

New World monkeys

The Atelidae is the only family represented in the present collection of casts of the deciduous dentition of New World monkeys. These include two genera of the subfamily Atelinae, Ateles and Alouatta.