| Determining relations between groups of living organism, finding their common traits, and establishing their evolutionary divergence has been of interest since the last century. Morphological structures and quantitative shape differences such as the number of toes, were used to place species in the tree of life, until recent developments in molecular systematic techniques started playing a pivotal role in establishing evolutionary history. However, morphological data still remains the only way of determining evolutionary position of extinct species. In this dissertation I present techniques for realizing 3D shapes of ancestors and provide an interface for interactively visualizing the gradual shape change along an evolutionary tree. Additionally, we augment fossil data in a molecular phylogeny by determining its evolutionary position.;Preservation of fossils in rocks for periods of time results in deformation of the fossil shape, which needs to be corrected before it can be used for morphometric analysis. In the first part of my dissertation I restore the bilateral symmetry of a shape by correcting for affine deformation and bending. In the following chapter, I discuss an automated process that detects and restores missing regions in fossils by using existing information from its symmetric side.;The advances of geometric morphometrics is based on analyzing shape variation and quantifying morphological difference as the difference in 3D positions of corresponding homologous, anatomically significant points called "landmarks." However, placing corresponding landmark points over a set of shapes can be a time-consuming process. In the second part of my dissertation I discuss a semiautomated process that transfers a dense set of landmark points from a template to a set of targets.;In the last part of the dissertation I present techniques developed to interactively visualize the 3D shape change along the molecular phylogeny of Old World Monkeys. We add Victoria macinessi, the oldest known cranium of an Old World Monkey to the tree, and show its in uence on the ancentral shape at the root. Finally, we find the optimal phylogenetic position of the extinct genus Parapapio, which was proposed to lie along the evolutionary branches emanating from the internal nodes Papionini and Papionina. |
