Inter- and intra-specific variation in the ontogeny of the hominoid facial skeleton: testing assumptions of ontogenetic variability.
In this paper we use geometric morphometric techniques to test two assumptions that are commonly made about variations in facial ontogeny: closely related species, or members of the same species, will share a common early post-natal ontogeny; and closely related species, or members of the same species, will share a common ontogenetic scaling trajectory. To test these assumptions we use four species of hominines: Homo sapiens, Gorilla gorilla, Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus. The first assumption is falsified, both inter- and intra-specifically, using discriminant analysis with crossvalidation of subadults prior to the onset of the eruption of the permanent dentition. The second assumption only holds true for inter-specific comparisons of ontogenetic scaling trajectories, while assumptions of variation in intra-specific scaling trajectories are falsified with these data.
Vioarsdóttir
Una Strand
US
Evolutionary Anthropology Research Group, Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3HN, United Kingdom. una.vidarsdottir@durham.ac.uk
Cobb
Sam
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000818:Animals; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005147:Facial Bones / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006071:Gorilla gorilla / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D015186:Hominidae / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D019974:Pan paniscus / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D044469:Racial Groups; D012886:Skull / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D013045:Species Specificity