Human Fossil Record Research Articles

Taxonomic and stable isotope analyses of mammal remains from the Lateglacial site of Grotta Polesini (central Italy): Paleoenviromental implications

ABSTRACTGrotta Polesini is one of the most famous paleontological and archaeological sites of central Italy, which testifies to its human occupation during the Lateglacial. The site comprises a cave system where systematic excavation campaigns have been carried out since the 1950s. In 1974, 656 mammal remains were collected but never studied. This fossil collection is here described for the first time through taxonomic and stable isotope analyses of the enamel of selected mammal teeth. The aim is to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental and climatic conditions of the site and to offer new information on terrestrial ecosystems during the Lateglacial in central Italy. The faunal assemblage studied herein, in addition to other species reported in previous works, suggests cold climate conditions. We also describe a right radius of an adult individual of Homo sapiens, increasing the human fossil record of the site. Carbon isotope data point to a scenario dominated by C3 plants in open and dry habitats, such as grasslands and steppes, in accordance with the pollen data from central Italy. The oxygen isotope data suggest the use of water resources with a local origin, i.e. local precipitation and surface waters with a provenance from the nearby Apennine chain. The ecology of the taxa influenced the oxygen isotope values, especially in the case of semi‐obligate to non‐obligate drinker species.

On the scientific credibility of paleoanthropology.

Smith and Smith and Wood proposed that the human fossil record offers special challenges for causal hypotheses because "unique" adaptations resist the comparative method. We challenge their notions of "uniqueness" and offer a refutation of the idea that there is something epistemologically special about human prehistoric data. Although paleontological data may be sparse, there is nothing inherent about this information that prevents its use in the inductive or deductive process, nor in the generation and testing of scientific hypotheses. The imprecision of the fossil record is well-understood, and such imprecision is often factored into hypotheses and methods. While we acknowledge some oversteps within the discipline, we also note that the history of paleoanthropology is clearly one of progress, with ideas tested and resolution added as data (fossils) are uncovered and new technologies applied, much like in sciences as diverse as astronomy, molecular genetics, and geology.

The Undescribed Juvenile Maxilla from Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco—A Study on Middle Stone Age Facial Growth

In 2009, renewed excavations at the Middle Stone Age (MSA) site of Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco, yielded a skull and partial skeleton of a child dated to Marine Isotope Stage 5. While much of the cranium was found shattered, the midface remained largely intact. In this study, we virtually reconstructed the maxilla and quantified its shape using three-dimensional geometric morphometric methods and compared it to an extensive sample of non-adult and adult Eurasian Neanderthals and Homo sapiens spanning the Middle Pleistocene to Holocene. We used developmental simulations to predict the adult shape of the Contrebandiers maxilla by simulating development along three ontogenetic trajectories: Neanderthal, African, and Levantine early H. sapiens and Holocene H. sapiens. Our results confirm the H. sapiens-like morphology of the Contrebandiers fossil. Both shape and size align it with other North African MSA fossils and Late Pleistocene humans from Qafzeh, Israel. Interestingly, the evaluation of the ontogenetic trajectories suggests that during late ontogeny the facial growth pattern of the Contrebandiers and the Qafzeh children is more similar to that of Neanderthals than it is to recent humans. This suggests that the unique facial growth pattern of Homo sapiens post-dated the MSA. This study is an important step in addressing ontogenetic variability in the African MSA, a period characterized by the origins, emergence, and dispersal of our species, but poorly understood because of the fragmentary and scant human fossil record.

Quantifying the relationship between bone and soft tissue measures within the rhesus macaques of Cayo Santiago.

Interpretations of the primate and human fossil record often rely on the estimation of somatic dimensions from bony measures. Both somatic and skeletal variation have been used to assess how primates respond to environmental change. However, it is unclear how well skeletal variation matches and predicts soft tissue. Here, we empirically test the relationship between tissues by comparing somatic and skeletal measures using paired measures of pre- and post-mortem rhesus macaques from Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. Somatic measurements were matched with skeletal dimensions from 105 rhesus macaque individuals to investigate paired signals of variation (i.e., coefficients of variation, sexual dimorphism) and bivariate codependence (reduced major axis regression) in measures of: (1) limb length; (2) joint breadth; and (3) limb circumference. Predictive models for the estimation of soft tissue dimensions from skeletons were built from Ordinary Least Squares regressions. Somatic and skeletal measurements showed statistically equivalent coefficients of variation and sexual dimorphism as well as high epiphyses-present ordinary least square (OLS) correlations in limb lengths (R2 >0.78, 0.82), joint breadths (R2 >0.74, 0.83) and, to a lesser extent, limb circumference (R2 >0.53, 0.68). Skeletal measurements are good substitutions for somatic values based on population signals of variation. OLS regressions indicate that skeletal correlates are highly predictive of somatic dimensions. The protocols and regression equations established here provide a basis for reliable reconstruction of somatic dimension from catarrhine fossils and validate our ability to compare or combine results of studies based on population data of either hard or soft tissue proxies.

Biomechanical and taxonomic diversity in the Early Pleistocene in East Africa: Structural analysis of a recently discovered femur shaft from Olduvai Gorge (bed I)

Recent Plio-Pleistocene hominin findings have revealed the complexity of human evolutionary history and the difficulties involved in its interpretation. Moreover, the study of hominin long bone remains is particularly problematic, since it commonly depends on the analysis of fragmentary skeletal elements that in many cases are merely represented by small diaphyseal portions and appear in an isolated fashion in the fossil record. Nevertheless, the study of the postcranial skeleton is particularly important to ascertain locomotor patterns. Here we report on the discovery of a robust hominin femoral fragment (OH 84) at the site of Amin Mturi Korongo dated to 1.84 Ma (Olduvai Bed I). External anatomy and internal bone structure of OH 84 were analyzed and compared with previously published data for modern humans and chimpanzees, as well as for Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo specimens ranging from the Late Pliocene to Late Pleistocene. Biomechanical analyses based on transverse cross-sections and the comparison of OH 84 with another robust Olduvai specimen (OH 80) suggest that OH 84 might be tentatively allocated to Paranthropus boisei. More importantly, the identification of a unique combination of traits in OH 84 could indicate both terrestrial bipedalism and an arboreal component in the locomotor repertoire of this individual. If interpreted correctly, OH 84 could thus add to the already mounting evidence of substantial locomotor diversity among Early Pleistocene hominins. Likewise, our results also highlight the difficulties in accurately interpreting the link between form and function in the human fossil record based on fragmentary remains, and ultimately in distinguishing between coeval hominin groups due to the heterogeneous pattern of inter- and intraspecific morphological variability detected among fossil femora.

Nasopharyngeal morphology contributes to understanding the "muddle in the middle" of the Pleistocene hominin fossil record.

The late archeologist Glynn Isaac first applied the term "muddle in the middle" to a poorly understood period in the Middle Pleistocene human fossil record. This study uses the nasopharyngeal boundaries as a source of traits that may inform this unclear period of human evolution. The nasopharynx lies at the nexus of several vital physiological systems, yet relatively little is known about its importance in human evolution. We analyzed a geographically diverse contemporary Homo sapiens growth series (n= 180 adults, 237 nonadults), Homo neanderthalensis (La Chapelle aux Saints 1, La Ferrassie 1, Forbes Quarry 1, Monte Circeo 1, and Saccopastore 1), mid-Pleistocene Homo (Atapuerca 5, Kabwe 1, Petralona 1, and Steinheim 1), and two Homo erectus sensu lato (KNM-ER 3733 and Sangiran 17). Methods include traditional (Analysis 1) and 3D geometric morphometric analysis (Analysis 2). H. erectus exhibited tall, narrow nasopharyngeal shape, a robust, ancestral morphology. Kabwe 1 and Petralona 1 plotted among H. sapiens in Analysis 2, exhibiting relatively shorter and vertical cartilaginous Eustachian tubes and vertical medial pterygoid plates. Atapuerca 5 and Steinheim 1 exhibited horizontal vomeral orientation similar to H. neanderthalensis, indicating greater relative soft palate length and anteroposterior nasopharynx expansion. They may exhibit synapomorphies with H. neanderthalensis, supporting the accretionary hypothesis. Species-level differences were found among H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis, including relatively longer dilator tubae muscles and extreme facial airorhynchy among Neanderthals. Furthermore, H. neanderthalensis were autapomorphic in exhibiting horizontal pterygoid plate orientation similar to human infants, suggesting that they may have had inferiorly low placement of the torus tubarius and Eustachian tube orifice on the lateral nasopharyngeal wall in life. This study supports use of osseous nasopharyngeal boundaries both for morphological characters and understanding evolution of otitis media susceptibility in living humans.

Fossils, fish and tropical forests: prehistoric human adaptations on the island frontiers of Oceania.

Oceania is a key region for studying human dispersals, adaptations and interactions with other hominin populations. Although archaeological evidence now reveals occupation of the region by approximately 65–45 000 years ago, its human fossil record, which has the best potential to provide direct insights into ecological adaptations and population relationships, has remained much more elusive. Here, we apply radiocarbon dating and stable isotope approaches to the earliest human remains so far excavated on the islands of Near and Remote Oceania to explore the chronology and diets of the first preserved human individuals to step across these Pacific frontiers. We demonstrate that the oldest human (or indeed hominin) fossil outside of the mainland New Guinea-Aru area dates to approximately 11 800 years ago. Furthermore, although these early sea-faring populations have been associated with a specialized coastal adaptation, we show that Late Pleistocene–Holocene humans living on islands in the Bismarck Archipelago and in Vanuatu display a persistent reliance on interior tropical forest resources. We argue that local tropical habitats, rather than purely coasts or, later, arriving domesticates, should be emphasized in discussions of human diets and cultural practices from the onset of our species' arrival in this part of the world.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Tropical forests in the deep human past’.

Integration of biplanar X-ray, three-dimensional animation and particle simulation reveals details of human 'track ontogeny'.

The emergence of bipedalism had profound effects on human evolutionary history, but the evolution of locomotor patterns within the hominin clade remains poorly understood. Fossil tracks record in vivo behaviours of extinct hominins, and they offer great potential to reveal locomotor patterns at various times and places across the human fossil record. However, there is no consensus on how to interpret anatomical or biomechanical patterns from tracks due to limited knowledge of the complex foot-substrate interactions through which they are produced. Here, we implement engineering-based methods to understand human track formation with the ultimate goal of unlocking invaluable information on hominin locomotion from fossil tracks. We first developed biplanar X-ray and three-dimensional animation techniques that permit visualization of subsurface foot motion as tracks are produced, and that allow for direct comparisons of foot kinematics to final track morphology. We then applied the discrete element method to accurately simulate the process of human track formation, allowing for direct study of human track ontogeny. This window lets us observe how specific anatomical and/or kinematic variables shape human track morphology, and it offers a new avenue for robust hypothesis testing in order to infer patterns of foot anatomy and motion from fossil hominin tracks.

Arothron: An R package for geometric morphometric methods and virtual anthropology applications.

The statistical analysis of fossil remains is essential to understand the evolution of the genus Homo. Unfortunately, the human fossil record is straight away scarce and plagued with severe loss of information caused by taphonomic processes. The recently developed field of Virtual Anthropology helps to ameliorate this situation by using digital techniques to restore damaged and incomplete fossils. We present the package Arothron, an R software suite meant to process and analyze digital models of skeletal elements. Arothron includes tools to digitally extract virtual cavities such as cranial endocasts, to statistically align disarticulated or broken bony elements, and to visualize local variations between surface meshes and landmark configurations. We describe the main functionalities of Arothron and illustrate their usage through reproducible case studies. We describe a tool for segmentation of skeletal cavities by showing its application on a malleus bone, a Neanderthal tooth, and a modern human cranium, reproducing their shape and calculating their volume. We illustrate how to digitally align a disarticulated model of a modern human cranium, and how to combine piecemeal shape information on individual specimens into one. In addition, we present useful visualization tools by comparing the morphological differences between the right hemisphere of the Neanderthal and the modern human brain. The Arothron R package is designed to study digital models of fossil specimens. By using Arothron, scientists can handle digital models with ease, investigate the inner morphology of 3D skeletal models, gain a full representation of the original shapes of damaged specimens, and compare shapes across specimens.

Bacteria, guano and soot: Source assessment of organic matter preserved in black laminae in stalagmites from caves of the Sierra de Atapuerca (N Spain)

Speleothems are a recognized source of paleoclimatic information, but their value as a source of signals from human activities in caves with an archaeological record has rarely been explored. Previous studies of speleothems in the Sierra de Atapuerca karst system (Burgos, northern Spain) revealed an important human fossil record, provided information about human activities in and around these caves, and the impacts on their natural environment. The present study reports the results of molecular characterization of dark-colored laminae from the stalagmites Ilargi (Galería de las Estatuas) and GS1, GS2, and GS3 (Galería del Silo), by pyrolysis-GC-MS (Py-GC-MS) and thermally assisted hydrolysis and methylation (THM-GC-MS). The features of the organic matter demonstrate the presence of (1) a dominant aliphatic fraction probably from in situ bacterial and ex situ plant-derived lipids, (2) black carbon (from soot and/or charcoal), (3) polysaccharides and N-rich moieties (probably from bat guano and microbial sources), and (4) a signal of terpenoid derivatives that may originate from the overlying limestone (kerogen) and extant gymnosperm resin (soils) or cyanobacteria (cave). Some plant-derived lignin may be present as well but was not identified unambiguously. It is concluded that this approach allows identifying multiple general sources of organic matter which can help understand speleothem formation processes, and evidence of soot deposition could be clearly linked to human activities.

La patella néandertalienne (Krapina et Regourdou 1), humaine moderne fossile (Chancelade 1) et humaine actuelle : une perspective interne

Evolutionary endostructural patterns of the cortical and cancellous tissues of the postcranial skeleton are commonly investigated for inferring functional behaviours in extinct hominin taxa and past human populations. Information on the endostructural arrangement of the patellar bone has the potential of revealing individual- and/or taxon-specific aspects of the knee biomechanics. However, evidence on its inner conformation extracted from human fossil specimens is nearly non-existent. The present pilot study aims at characterising the endostructural pattern of two Neandertal (from Krapina, Croatia, and Regourdou, France) and one anatomically modern fossil human (from Chancelade, France) adult patellae and to compare their signal with the recent human condition. In the context of the gracilisation trend of the human skeleton occurred from the late Pleistocene, we expect (i) the two Neandertal patellae showing a higher amount of cortical bone compared to the fossil modern and the recent human conditions, (ii) the fossil modern patella showing a higher amount of cortical bone compared to the comparative sample, (iii) the cancellous network being relatively homogeneous between the two Neandertal individuals but distinguishable from that of the fossil modern human representative and of the comparative sample, and that (iv) the structural organisation revealed by the fossil modern patella is distinguishable from the recent human condition. For assessing the endostructural organisation of the selected patellae, we used non-invasive techniques of high resolution virtual imaging. The results do not support the first hypothesis, as marked differences have been found between the two Neandertal specimens. The second hypothesis is supported for the anterior surface, but not for the posterior surface. The third hypothesis is supported for the superior and the lateral regions of the patellar bone but for the inferior and medial portions. Finally, the fourth hypothesis is supported, but the cancellous organisation of the two Neandertal representatives is closer to the extant human pattern than to the Magdalenian specimen. Despite the generalised lack of comparable information from the human fossil record, we consider the present results of potential interest for future research of paleobiomechanical, paleobiological, and perhaps taxonomic interest, on the evolutionary structure of the human knee joint.

Oral pathological conditions of an Early Epipaleolithic human from Southwest Asia: Ohalo II H2 as a probable case of intentional dental ablation

ObjectiveTo describe the oral pathological conditions of Ohalo II H2, an Early Epipaleolithic human from southwest Asia. MaterialsThe dentognathic skeleton of Ohalo II H2 and relevant comparative data from similar chronological and/or geographic contexts. MethodsGross and x-ray observations of oral pathological conditions and occlusal wear were made following published protocols. A differential diagnosis of antemortem tooth loss is provided. ResultsOhalo 2 has two carious lesions on the right M3, pulpal exposure of left M1, and mild to moderate anterior alveolar bone loss. The right I1 was lost antemortem, and there is probably agenesis of the left M3. ConclusionsThe pathological conditions noted are not exceptional for a Late Upper Paleolithic forager. However, the antemortem missing right I1 is most parsimoniously explained by intentional dental ablation. SignificanceOhalo 2 could represent the oldest example of dental ablation from the Late Pleistocene circum-Mediterranean world – predating the earliest examples from both North Africa and southwest Asia by several thousand years. The similarity of the Ohalo 2 ablation pattern with later Natufians provides further evidence of potential long-term behavioral trends related to the embodiment of social identities through international body modification within the Epipaleolithic of southwest Asia. LimitationsThe pre-Natufian (∼23,000–14,500 cal BP) human fossil record is relatively sparse, making comparisons with the Natufian (∼14,500−11,500 cal BP) phases of the Epipaleolithic difficult. Suggestions for Further ResearchDocumentation of oral pathological conditions for other pre-Natufian fossils would provide greater resolution of the temporospatial patterning of oral health and embodied social identities during the Epipaleolithic of southwest Asia.

Snapshots of human anatomy, locomotion, and behavior from Late Pleistocene footprints at Engare Sero, Tanzania

Fossil hominin footprints preserve data on a remarkably short time scale compared to most other fossil evidence, offering snapshots of organisms in their immediate ecological and behavioral contexts. Here, we report on our excavations and analyses of more than 400 Late Pleistocene human footprints from Engare Sero, Tanzania. The site represents the largest assemblage of footprints currently known from the human fossil record in Africa. Speed estimates show that the trackways reflect both walking and running behaviors. Estimates of group composition suggest that these footprints were made by a mixed-sex and mixed-age group, but one that consisted of mostly adult females. One group of similarly-oriented trackways was attributed to 14 adult females who walked together at the same pace, with only two adult males and one juvenile accompanying them. In the context of modern ethnographic data, we suggest that these trackways may capture a unique snapshot of cooperative and sexually divided foraging behavior in Late Pleistocene humans.

Postcranial hominin remains from the Late Pleistocene of Pešturina Cave (Serbia)

The Central Balkans represents a significant geographical gap in the human fossil record of Eurasia. Here we present two new human fossils from Pešturina Cave, Serbia: a partial atlas vertebra (C1) and a fragment of radial diaphysis. The atlas (Pes-1) derives from the lower portion of Layer 2 and conforms to modern human morphology. This layer is characterized by Gravettian industry despite uncertainties caused by bioturbation and difficulties in separating Layers 2 and 3. The radial fragment (Pes-2) was recovered from the contact zone between Layers 3 and 4, both of which represent Mousterian industries, and is tentatively assessed as Neanderthal based on morphology. With the recent publication of a Neanderthal molar (Pes-3) from the same site, Pešturina currently stands as the only Neanderthal fossil-bearing site in Serbia. These additional finds make Pešturina Cave the only site in the Central Balkans which preserves both modern human and Neanderthal remains with associated lithic industries and highlights the importance of Pešturina in the current discourse on hominin dispersals and migrations in the Balkans.

Reassessment of the Middle Pleistocene human remains from Rabat-Kébibat (Morocco)

The peopling of North Africa and the emergence of the first Homo sapiens is an ongoing debate, recently enriched by the discovery of a new human fossil remain in Jebel Irhoud (Morocco), attributed to a modern human and dated to ca 300 ka. In this context, it seems important to reassess all the human fossil record available in the area, integrating also new discoveries and data in order to precisely understand the dynamic of the peopling of this region. We propose here a reevaluation of the human fossils remains collected by Marçais in the early twentieth century in the Rabat-Kébibat quarry and belonging to the Middle Pleistocene period. The Rabat-Kébibat quarry, situated on the Atlantic littoral some 10km south of Rabat, is known geologically and chronologically since the 1930s. Recently, a Franco-Moroccan team has undertaken new investigation of the coastal region of Rabat with the aim of reconstructing the evolution of landscape of the Moroccan North Atlantic coast from the end of the Middle Pleistocene to the Upper Pleistocene. In this framework, different stratigraphical sequences from several sites has been analyzed and compared. This study has allowed to hypothesize that the human fossil remains from Rabat-Kébibat probably belong to a MIS 7 stratigraphical level.

Evolutionary Perspective in Rickets and Vitamin D.

Modern lifestyle limits our exposure to sunlight, which photosynthesizes vitamin D in the skin, and the incidence of nutritional rickets has been resurging. Vitamin D is one of the first hormones; it is photosynthesized in all organism from the phytoplankton to mammals. A selective sweep of the promoter of the vitamin D receptor (VDR) happened as soon as Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa; it co-adapted with skin color genes to provide adaptation to latitudes and the levels of exposure to ultraviolet (UV)B radiation along the route out of Africa. Exposure to UVB radiation balances the need for vitamin D photosynthesis and degradation of folic acid by UVB radiation. Skin color follows a latitude distribution: the darkest populations dwell in the tropical belt; and the fair-skinned populations inhabit the northern countries. Due to their greater need for calcium during their reproductive life, the skin color of women is lighter- than that of men. Vitamin D is essential for mineral homeostasis and has a wide variety of non-skeletal functions, of which the most important for natural selection is a regulatory function in the innate immune system. In the human fossil record, vitamin D deficiency coincided with bone tuberculosis. About 6,000 years ago, a diet which included cow's milk provided Neolithic humans with twice as much calcium and was more alkaline than that of its Paleolithic predecessors. Adiposity is negatively associated with the vitamin D status and obese individuals require 2–3 times more vitamin D than non-obese individuals to normalize circulating 25OHD levels. In an era of an obesity epidemic, we need more research to determine whether adiposity should be considered when determining the dietary requirements for vitamin D and calcium and the optimal serum 25OHD levels.

What can trabecular bone tell us about activity levels and self‐domestication?

Various studies have compared trabecular bone fraction (i.e., TBF both volumetric and areal) among modern humans, great apes and fossil hominins and found that modern humans have gracile skeletons in having low TBF. This has been observed even among populations engaging in greater levels of activity such as foraging compared to farming. These findings raise questions about when and why the gracile human skeleton emerged. Although, sedentism has been proposed to explain this phenomenon, another hypothesis that may explain the unusually gracile modern human skeleton is the human self‐domestication (HSD) hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that selection for prosociality among mammals with increased cognition resulted in changes in morphological features e.g., having a slight reduction in cranial capacity, a globular cranium, and thin cranial bones. In fact, other mammals thought to have undergone self‐domestication such as bonobos vs. chimpanzees, domestic dogs vs. wolves exhibit this trend in prosociality, and display differences in morphological traits such as feminization of the skull, and a reduction in cranial capacity among others. Thus, these observations provide an opportunity to test the HSD hypothesis. The present study tests this hypothesis first, by examining whether domestic dogs have low TBF (gracile skeletons) compared to their wild relatives: the wolves, foxes, and coyotes based on the understanding that domestic dogs are prosocial relative to their wild counterparts and therefore, would exhibit low TBF as a by‐product of selection for prosociality. Secondly, by estimating TBF in the human fossil record comparing hominins from the Pleistocene (early Homo and upper Paleolithic Homo), and recent modern humans from the Holocene. MicroCT and pQCT scanning were used to image proximal femora and humeri, which were then analyzed using Quant3D to quantify TBF. One‐way ANOVA with Tukey post‐hoc correction was used to identify differences among species. Results show that, indeed the domestic dogs across breeds studied exhibit low TBF compared to wolves and other canids. Secondly, that recent modern humans have low TBF compared to Pleistocene hominins. These results suggest that it is plausible that apart from sedentism, selection for prosociality may have had an effect on gracility, however, more work on other prosocial species that underwent self‐domestication needs to be done to further test this hypothesis and better understand the mechanisms responsible for it. These findings indicate that the highly gracile skeletons of modern humans and the increased risks of bone fracture associated with a decline in bone mass have evolutionary underpinnings‐ albeit relatively recent‐ than has been considered before.Support or Funding InformationNASA WV Space ConsortiumThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Measuring the shape: performance evaluation of a photogrammetry improvement applied to the Neanderthal skull Saccopastore 1

Several digital technologies are nowadays developed and applied to the study of the human fossil record. Here, we present a low-cost hardware implementation of the digital acquisition via photogrammetry, applied to a specimen of paleoanthropological interest: the Neanderthal skull Saccopastore 1. Such implementation has the purpose to semi-automatize the procedures of digital acquisition, by the introduction of an automatically rotating platform users can easily build on their own with minimum costs. We provide all the technical specifications, mostly based on the Arduino UNO™ microcontroller technology, and evaluate the performance and the resolution of the acquisition by comparing it with the CT-scan of the same specimen through the calculation of their shape differences. In our opinion, the replication of the automatic rotating platform, described in this work, may contribute to the improvement of the digital acquisition processes and may represent, in addition, a useful and affordable tool for both research and dissemination.

Step width and frontal plane trunk motion in bipedal chimpanzee and human walking

Human bipedalism is characterized by mediolateral oscillations of the center of mass (CoM) between the feet. The preferred step widths and CoM oscillations used by humans likely represent a trade-off of several factors (e.g., stance and swing phase costs). However, it is difficult to assess whether human frontal plane control strategies are unique given few detailed data on frontal plane motion during facultative bipedalism in apes. Here, we collected three-dimensional kinematic and kinetic data in humans and chimpanzees to investigate the relationship between step width, mediolateral CoM motion, frontal plane trunk kinematics, and CoM power during bipedalism. Chimpanzee bipedalism entails mediolateral CoM oscillations and step widths that are (scaled to lower/hind limb length) three times larger than those of humans. Chimpanzees use a combination of linear and angular motion of the trunk and list the entire trunk, and especially thorax, over the stance side foot, generating large mediolateral shifts in the CoM, whereas humans utilize little angular motion within the trunk. Larger mediolateral CoM motions do not have a significant effect on CoM power. Similarities between bipedal chimpanzees and other bipedal non-human primates (macaques and gibbons) indicate that narrow CoM motions are unique to humans and are likely due to our adducted hips and valgus knees. Valgus knees appear early in the human fossil record (∼3.6 Ma), contemporaneous with the Laetoli footprints. However, fossils attributed to Ardipithecus ramidus (∼4.4 Ma) suggest that the earliest hominins may have lacked a hominin-like degree of knee valgus. If correct, this suggests that this species may have used wide steps, larger mediolateral CoM motions, and perhaps larger trunk motions during bipedal walking. Finally, we present a novel means to estimate mediolateral CoM motion from trackway step width, and estimate that the Laetoli G track maker used CoM motions within the human range.

Virtual Anthropology and its Application in Cultural Heritage Studies

ABSTRACTThe remains that typically compose the human fossil record often bear cracks, damage, and deformations. The recent rapid development of ‘virtual anthropology’ has provided innovative tools to manage, study, and preserve cultural and natural heritage. Such tools include computerized tomography (CT), laser scanning, photogrammetry, 3D imaging, and rapid prototyping. These approaches can contribute to any archaeological context from the discovery of artefacts to research, preservation, and dissemination. 3D imaging techniques can substitute physical intervention with a virtual protocol to restore the original shape of a fossil specimen. In a similar way, digital morphological information can be recovered using data preserved even on a fragment through the use of 3D comparative samples. Here we present an extended and updated review of the most innovative protocols in virtual anthropology, also applicable in other fields such as natural history and cultural heritage studies, through the description of recent cast studies.