title: Morphology of muscle attachment sites in the modern human hand does not reflect muscle architecture.
abstract: Muscle attachment sites (entheses) on dry bones are regularly used by paleontologists to infer soft tissue anatomy and to reconstruct behaviors of extinct organisms. This method is commonly applied to fossil hominin hand bones to assess their abilities to participate in Paleolithic stone tool behaviors. Little is known, however, about how or even whether muscle anatomy and activity regimes influence the morphologies of their entheses, especially in the hand. Using the opponens muscles from a sample of modern humans, we tested the hypothesis that aspects of hand muscle architecture that are known to be influenced by behavior correlate with the size and shape of their associated entheses. Results show no consistent relationships between these behaviorally-influenced aspects of muscle architecture and entheseal morphology. Consequently, it is likely premature to infer patterns of behavior, such as stone tool making in fossil hominins, from these same entheses.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Chatham University, Woodland Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA.|Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, The George Washington University, 800 22nd St., NW, Suite 6000, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
authors.forename: E M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Williams-Hatala
authors.affiliation: Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, The George Washington University, 800 22nd St., NW, Suite 6000, Washington, DC 20052, USA.|Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: K G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Hatala
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Chatham University, Woodland Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hiles
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy, Midwestern University, 555 31st St., Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA.|Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, 104 Biological Sciences Building, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
authors.forename: K N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Rabey
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002102:Cadaver; D005580:Fossils; D050276:Hand Bones / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D015186:Hominidae / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology; D053001:Tool Use Behavior