Virtual reconstruction of the Upper Palaeolithic skull from Zlatý Kůň, Czech Republic: Sex assessment and morphological affinity.

Rebeka Rmoutilová,Bruno Maureille,Frédéric Santos,Mathilde Samsel,Pierre Guyomarc’h,Jaroslav Brůžek,Petr Velemínský,Alena Šefčáková,Karen Rosenberg

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0201431

Abstract

The incomplete cranium discovered at the Zlatý kůň site in the Bohemian Karst is a rare piece of skeletal evidence of human presence in Central Europe during the Late Glacial period. The relative position of cranial fragments was restored and missing parts of the cranium were virtually reconstructed using mirroring and the Thin-plate splines algorithm. The reconstruction allowed us to collect principal cranial measurements, revise a previous unfounded sex assignment and explore the specimen’s morphological affinity. Visual assessment could not reliably provide a sexual diagnosis, as such methods have been developed on modern populations. Using a population-specific approach developed on cranial measurements collected from the literature on reliably sexed European Upper Palaeolithic specimens, linear discriminant analysis confirmed previous assignment to the female sex. However, caution is necessary with regard to the fact that it was assessed from the skull. The Zlatý kůň specimen clearly falls within the range of Upper Palaeolithic craniometric variation. Despite the shift in cranial variation that accompanied the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the Zlatý kůň skull exhibits a morphological affinity with the pre-LGM population. Several interpretations are proposed with regard to the complex population processes that occurred after the LGM in Europe.

Highlights

The Late Glacial period, characterized by a retreat of the continental ice sheet after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ca 23 to 19 ky cal BP) [1] and abrupt climatic changes [2], provided a rich human skeletal record in Southern and Western Europe
Considering the new chrono-cultural attribution of the Zlatykůň specimen and the context of a genetic and morphological shift attributed to the LGM, we addressed two questions concerning the history of the specimen: (1) What is the morphological affinity of the Zlatykůň skull when compared with extant and UP European populations? and (2) Is it possible to determine the sex of the Zlatykůň individual based on its cranial morphology? We addressed these questions using linear data extracted from a virtually reconstructed model which we compared with available cranial data obtained from recent and UP specimens
The Moča cranium was computed tomography (CT) scanned at the Hospital Na Homolce in Prague, with similar acquisition parameters as those used in the study of the Zlatykůň specimen

Summary

Introduction

The Late Glacial period, characterized by a retreat of the continental ice sheet after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ca 23 to 19 ky cal BP) [1] and abrupt climatic changes [2], provided a rich human skeletal record in Southern and Western Europe. There is a paucity of human remains dated to the Late Glacial period in Central Europe [3,4]: an adult skeleton from Bichon in Switzerland (11,760 ± 110 BP) [5], one adult individual from Mittlere Klause. Radiocarbon dating revealed a more recent age of some specimens previously assigned to the Late Glacial period [11,14]. Southwestern Europe excluding Italy had yielded six Middle Magdalenian skeletons and almost 30 specimens dated to the Final Upper Palaeolithic (for a review, see [15,16,17])

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion