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Godfrey LR, Shapiro LJ, Wall CE, Wunderlich RE. In memoriam: William Lee Jungers, Jr. J Hum Evol 2024; 189:103515. [PMID: 38422880 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2024.103515] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2023] [Revised: 02/16/2024] [Accepted: 02/19/2024] [Indexed: 03/02/2024]
Affiliation(s)
- Laurie R Godfrey
- Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA.
| | - Liza J Shapiro
- Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA
| | - Christine E Wall
- Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and Duke Lemur Center, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27705, USA; Department of Anatomy, College of Osteopathic Medicine, New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, NY, 11568, USA
| | - Roshna E Wunderlich
- Department of Biology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, 22807, USA
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Abstract
Abstract
Creation and subsequent abandonment of a number of earlier species considered human ancestors: Eoanthropus dawsoni, Hesperopithecus haroldcooki, Homo gardarensis and Ramapithecus punjabicus is presented using cases from the history of science. This review indicates that the fossil evidence for these species has been questionable from the beginning but that mental images – memes – they invoked were attractive to students of human evolution and as such persisted even if not confirmed by further finds, with new research still being disputed. Against this background the status of the recent construction of the hominin species “Homo floresiensis” is discussed showing that despite dubious interpretations of the objective data and a relatively long time of non-confirmation due to paucity of newly discovered skeletal remains, the “species” still exists in minds of scholars and in the scientific literature extending into textbooks.
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Bergmann I, Hublin JJ, Gunz P, Freidline SE. How did modern morphology evolve in the human mandible? The relationship between static adult allometry and mandibular variability in Homo sapiens. J Hum Evol 2021; 157:103026. [PMID: 34214909 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2021.103026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2020] [Revised: 05/12/2021] [Accepted: 05/12/2021] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
Key to understanding human origins are early Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud, as well as from the early Late Pleistocene sites Tabun, Border Cave, Klasies River Mouth, Skhul, and Qafzeh. While their upper facial shape falls within the recent human range of variation, their mandibles display a mosaic morphology. Here we quantify how mandibular shape covaries with mandible size and how static allometry differs between Neanderthals, early H. sapiens, and modern humans from the Upper Paleolithic/Later Stone Age and Holocene (= later H. sapiens). We use 3D (semi)landmark geometric morphometric methods to visualize allometric trends and to explore how gracilization affects the expression of diagnostic shape features. Early H. sapiens were highly variable in mandible size, exhibiting a unique allometric trajectory that explains aspects of their 'archaic' appearance. At the same time, early H. sapiens share a suite of diagnostic features with later H. sapiens that are not related to mandibular sizes, such as an incipient chin and an anteroposteriorly decreasing corpus height. The mandibular morphology, often referred to as 'modern', can partly be explained by gracilization owing to size reduction. Despite distinct static allometric shape changes in each group studied, bicondylar and bigonial breadth represent important structural constraints for the expression of shape features in most Middle to Late Pleistocene hominin mandibles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Inga Bergmann
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Jean-Jacques Hublin
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Philipp Gunz
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
| | - Sarah E Freidline
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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Scardia G, Neves WA, Tattersall I, Blumrich L. What kind of hominin first left Africa? Evol Anthropol 2020; 30:122-127. [PMID: 32893976 DOI: 10.1002/evan.21863] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2020] [Revised: 05/19/2020] [Accepted: 08/05/2020] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Abstract
Recent discoveries of stone tools from Jordan (2.5 Ma) and China (2.1 Ma) document hominin presence in Asia at the beginning of the Pleistocene, well before the conventional Dmanisi datum at 1.8 Ma. Although no fossil hominins documenting this earliest Out of Africa phase have been found, on chronological grounds a pre-Homo erectus hominin must be considered the most likely maker of those artifacts. If so, this sheds new light on at least two disputed subjects in paleoanthropology, namely the remarkable variation among the five Dmanisi skulls, and the ancestry of Homo floresiensis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giancarlo Scardia
- Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas, Rio Claro, Brazil
| | - Walter A Neves
- Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Instituto de Estudos Avançados, São Paulo, Brazil
| | - Ian Tattersall
- Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York, USA
| | - Lukas Blumrich
- Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Instituto de Estudos Avançados, São Paulo, Brazil
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Matabuena Rodríguez M, Diz Dios P, Cadarso-Suárez C, Diniz-Freitas M, Outumuro Rial M, Abeleira Pazos MT, Limeres Posse J. Reassessment of fluctuating dental asymmetry in Down syndrome. Sci Rep 2017; 7:16679. [PMID: 29192202 PMCID: PMC5709470 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-16798-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/25/2017] [Accepted: 11/13/2017] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Fluctuating dental asymmetry (FDA) is a tool to measure developmental stability that could be increased in gonosomal aneuploidies. The aim of this study was to quantify FDA in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). The study group comprised 40 individuals with DS, and a control group matched for age and sex was created. The target teeth were the maxillary central incisors (11,21), maxillary lateral incisors (12,22), maxillary canines (13,23), and maxillary first molars (16,26). Dental morphometric variables measured on CBCT images included tooth length, crown height, root length, mesio-distal diameter, crown-to-root ratio, vestibular-palatine diameter, mid mesio-distal diameter, mid buccal-palatal diameter, maximum buccal-palatal diameter, and cervical circumference. The FA2 fluctuating asymmetry index (Palmer and Strobeck, 1986) was applied. Some discrepancies in crown-to-root ratios and root length asymmetry were significantly lower in the DS individuals than in controls. Combining the crown-to-root ratio of tooth 11 versus 21, tooth 12 versus 22, and tooth 13 versus 23, we developed a predictive model with a discriminatory power between DS and controls of 0.983. Some dental morphometric variables may actually be more stable in DS individuals than in the general population. This offers a new perspective on the relationship between canalization, fluctuating asymmetry, and aneuploidy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marcos Matabuena Rodríguez
- Unit of Biostatistics, Department of Statistics and Operations Research, School of Medicine, University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Pedro Diz Dios
- Medical-Surgical Dentistry Research Group (OMEQUI), Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Rede Galega INBIOEST, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Carmen Cadarso-Suárez
- Unit of Biostatistics, Department of Statistics and Operations Research, School of Medicine, University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Rede Galega INBIOEST, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Márcio Diniz-Freitas
- Medical-Surgical Dentistry Research Group (OMEQUI), Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
| | - Mercedes Outumuro Rial
- Medical-Surgical Dentistry Research Group (OMEQUI), Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Maria Teresa Abeleira Pazos
- Medical-Surgical Dentistry Research Group (OMEQUI), Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Rede Galega INBIOEST, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
| | - Jacobo Limeres Posse
- Medical-Surgical Dentistry Research Group (OMEQUI), Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Santiago de Compostela, Spain
- Rede Galega INBIOEST, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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Jungers WL, Grabowski M, Hatala KG, Richmond BG. The evolution of body size and shape in the human career. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2017; 371:rstb.2015.0247. [PMID: 27298459 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0247] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/29/2016] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Body size is a fundamental biological property of organisms, and documenting body size variation in hominin evolution is an important goal of palaeoanthropology. Estimating body mass appears deceptively simple but is laden with theoretical and pragmatic assumptions about best predictors and the most appropriate reference samples. Modern human training samples with known masses are arguably the 'best' for estimating size in early bipedal hominins such as the australopiths and all members of the genus Homo, but it is not clear if they are the most appropriate priors for reconstructing the size of the earliest putative hominins such as Orrorin and Ardipithecus The trajectory of body size evolution in the early part of the human career is reviewed here and found to be complex and nonlinear. Australopith body size varies enormously across both space and time. The pre-erectus early Homo fossil record from Africa is poor and dominated by relatively small-bodied individuals, implying that the emergence of the genus Homo is probably not linked to an increase in body size or unprecedented increases in size variation. Body size differences alone cannot explain the observed variation in hominin body shape, especially when examined in the context of small fossil hominins and pygmy modern humans.This article is part of the themed issue 'Major transitions in human evolution'.
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Affiliation(s)
- William L Jungers
- Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Stony Brook, NY 11795, USA Association Vahatra, BP 3972, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar
| | - Mark Grabowski
- Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University, 2110 G St., NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA
| | - Kevin G Hatala
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University, 2110 G St., NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA
| | - Brian G Richmond
- Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA Department of Human Evolution, Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
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Argue D, Groves CP, Lee MS, Jungers WL. The affinities of Homo floresiensis based on phylogenetic analyses of cranial, dental, and postcranial characters. J Hum Evol 2017; 107:107-133. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.02.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 76] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/04/2016] [Revised: 02/21/2017] [Accepted: 02/23/2017] [Indexed: 01/09/2023]
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