We investigate the distributed complexity of maximal matching and maximal independent set (MIS) in hypergraphs in the LOCAL model. A maximal matching of a hypergraph $H=(V_H,E_H)$ is a maximal disjoint set $M\subseteq E_H$ of hyperedges and an MIS $S\subseteq V_H$ is a maximal set of nodes such that no hyperedge is fully contained in $S$. Both problems can be solved by a simple sequential greedy algorithm, which can be implemented naively in $O(Δr + \log^* n)$ rounds, where $Δ$ is the maximum degree, $r$ is the rank, and $n$ is the number of nodes. We show that for maximal matching, this naive algorithm is optimal in the following sense. Any deterministic algorithm for solving the problem requires $Ω(\min\{Δr, \log_{Δr} n\})$ rounds, and any randomized one requires $Ω(\min\{Δr, \log_{Δr} \log n\})$ rounds. Hence, for any algorithm with a complexity of the form $O(f(Δ, r) + g(n))$, we have $f(Δ, r) \in Ω(Δr)$ if $g(n)$ is not too large, and in particular if $g(n) = \log^* n$ (which is the optimal asymptotic dependency on $n$ due to Linial's lower bound [FOCS'87]). Our lower bound proof is based on the round elimination framework, and its structure is inspired by a new round elimination fixed point that we give for the $Δ$-vertex coloring problem in hypergraphs. For the MIS problem on hypergraphs, we show that for $Δ\ll r$, there are significant improvements over the naive $O(Δr + \log^* n)$-round algorithm. We give two deterministic algorithms for the problem. We show that a hypergraph MIS can be computed in $O(Δ^2\cdot\log r + Δ\cdot\log r\cdot \log^* r + \log^* n)$ rounds. We further show that at the cost of a worse dependency on $Δ$, the dependency on $r$ can be removed almost entirely, by giving an algorithm with complexity $Δ^{O(Δ)}\cdot\log^* r + O(\log^* n)$.