Chin morphology and sexual dimorphism in the fossil hominid mandible sample from Klasies River Mouth

Lam, Y. M.; Pearson, Osbjorn M.; Smith, Cameron M.

doi:10.1002/(sici)1096-8644(199608)100:4<545::aid-ajpa8>3.0.co;2-p

Cited by 63 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 39 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…1). They have an abundance of archaic features and few if any derived characteristics of modern humans (68)(69)(70)(71)(72)(73); they are nonetheless treated as morphologically ambiguous and added post hoc to the Eurasian late archaic sample and then to the Middle Paleolithic modern human sample. All but one of the five specimens from those samples providing age indicators (entirely dental attrition) are in the young adult category.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Late Pleistocene adult mortality patterns and modern human establishment

Trinkaus

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The establishment of modern humans in the Late Pleistocene, subsequent to their emergence in eastern Africa, is likely to have involved substantial population increases, during their initial dispersal across southern Asia and their subsequent expansions throughout Africa and into more northern Eurasia. An assessment of younger (20–40 y) versus older (>40 y) adult mortality distributions for late archaic humans (principally Neandertals) and two samples of early modern humans (Middle Paleolithic and earlier Upper Paleolithic) provides little difference across the samples. All three Late Pleistocene samples have a dearth of older individuals compared with Holocene ethnographic/historical samples. They also lack older adults compared with Holocene paleodemographic profiles that have been critiqued for having too few older individuals for subsistence, social, and demographic viability. Although biased, probably through a combination of preservation, age assessment, and especially Pleistocene mobility requirements, these adult mortality distributions suggest low life expectancy and demographic instability across these Late Pleistocene human groups. They indicate only subtle and paleontologically invisible changes in human paleodemographics with the establishment of modern humans; they provide no support for a life history advantage among early modern humans.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Late Pleistocene adult mortality patterns and modern human establishment

Trinkaus

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The southern African Middle Stone Age remains from Blombos, Die Kelders, Klasies River Mouth, Mumbwa, Pinnacle Point, and Sea Harvest present few distinctly modern human features (small teeth do not so qualify), have a series of archaic aspects of the cranium, mandible, dentition, and postcranium, and may represent the product of admixture between regional late archaic humans and southward dispersing modern humans after Ϸ100 ka B.P. (17)(18)(19). Hofmeyr 1 (13) is younger than the earliest EEMHs and therefore cannot be ancestral to them.…”

Section: The Relevant Fossilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

European early modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals

Trinkaus

2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

188

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A consideration of the morphological aspects of the earliest modern humans in Europe (more than Ϸ33,000 B.P.) and the subsequent Gravettian human remains indicates that they possess an anatomical pattern congruent with the autapomorphic (derived) morphology of the earliest (Middle Paleolithic) African modern humans. However, they exhibit a variable suite of features that are either distinctive Neandertal traits and/or plesiomorphic (ancestral) aspects that had been lost among the African Middle Paleolithic modern humans. These features include aspects of neurocranial shape, basicranial external morphology, mandibular ramal and symphyseal form, dental morphology and size, and anteroposterior dental proportions, as well as aspects of the clavicles, scapulae, metacarpals, and appendicular proportions. The ubiquitous and variable presence of these morphological features in the European earlier modern human samples can only be parsimoniously explained as a product of modest levels of assimilation of Neandertals into early modern human populations as the latter dispersed across Europe. This interpretation is in agreement with current analyses of recent and past human molecular data.crania ͉ dentition ͉ Late Pleistocene ͉ postcrania T he evolutionary fate of the Neandertals has preoccupied paleoanthropologists with varying degrees of intensity for approximately a century, emerging with the human paleontological discoveries of the early 20th century and the resultant syntheses. Although present throughout the 20th century, considerations of the fate of the Neandertals have intensified in the past quarter-century starting with the paleontological emergence of Out-of-Africa models of modern human origins (1, 2) that combined the early appearance of modern human anatomy in Africa (2, 3) with the presence of equatorial anatomical patterns among the earliest modern Europeans (1). These interpretations were joined half a decade later by inferences from extant human molecular analyses, which rapidly polarized the field into two opposing models, best termed the Replacement (Out-of-Africa with total replacement of all other indigenous human populations) and Regional Continuity (variable regional transitions to modern human morphology among genetically interconnected human populations). † After two decades of debate, it is now recognized that these polarized models, Replacement (sensu stricto) vs. Regional Continuity (sensu stricto) are intellectually dead. Repeated attempts to refute one or the other model have shown that it is easy, on a global basis, to refute both scenarios with paleontological and/or extant human biological (both anatomical and molecular) data. It is time to move on from these models, and, particularly in the past half-decade, the emergent consensus model of modern human emergence is one of Out-of-Africa with temporally and geographically varying degrees of absorption of regional late archaic populations [the Assimilation Model (10)]. The issue is no longer whether human populations outside of the African ...

show abstract

“…From my personal observation, Omo Kibish 1 has a mental eminence closely resembling that of KRM 41815, the mandible that has the most projecting chin at Klasies River Mouth. 25 Perhaps an explanation for these different appraisals lies in the fact that such qualitative judgments always entail a degree of subjectivity and may contain more interobserver error than one might wish.…”

Section: Statistical Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistical and biological definitions of “anatomically modern” humans: Suggestions for a unified approach to modern morphology

Pearson

2008

Evolutionary Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Much of the recent literature on the origin of modern humans has been plagued by an inability of the participants in the debate to agree on what constitutes “anatomically modern” morphology. An upshot of this disagreement has been an ongoing set of debates over which specimens are or are not anatomically modern and whether various fossil specimens such as the Florisbad cranium, Vindija Neanderthals, Klasies River Mouth mandibles, or Skhul‐Qafzeh hominins, all of which arguably possess some supposedly “modern” traits, qualify as genuinely “modern.” Such decisions frequently have implications with regard to how we reconstruct later hominin phylogenies and, ultimately, how we reconstruct the behaviors, adaptations, and evolution of Middle‐Late Pleistocene African hominins and their contemporaries.

show abstract

Chin morphology and sexual dimorphism in the fossil hominid mandible sample from Klasies River Mouth

Cited by 63 publications

References 39 publications

Late Pleistocene adult mortality patterns and modern human establishment

Late Pleistocene adult mortality patterns and modern human establishment

European early modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals

Statistical and biological definitions of “anatomically modern” humans: Suggestions for a unified approach to modern morphology

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About