Australian Cranial Traits: Function, Development, and ModernHuman Origins

澳大利亚颅骨特征：功能、发育和现代人类起源

• 批准号: 9804861
• 负责人: Susan Anton
• 金额: $ 5.16万
• 依托单位: University of Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-09-01 至 2001-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9804861&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Australian; Cranial; Traits; Function; Development; Australian; Cranial; Traits; Function; Development

The relationship between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens is critical to understanding the origin of modern humans. Two schools of thought exist, one that sees regional evolution of Homo sapiens from local populations of H. erectus throughout the Old World, and another that sees H. sapiens originating in Africa and ultimately replacing local H. erectus populations. Both schools use cranial characters to examine the degree of continuity in a geographic region but differ on their interpretations of the significance of these characters. Both agree that the best case for such continuity can be made in Australasia. This study uses comparative human anatomy to explicitly test whether the characters used to link Indonesian H. erectus and Australian modern humans are likely to be good indicators of genetic relatedness. The hypotheses to be tested are: 1) are the linking features functionally associated with a robust masticatory (chewing) pattern in modern Australians, 2) are features of the neurocranium (braincase) structural consequences of growth universal to long-headed individuals but not necessarily of genetic valence, and 3) are cranial keels structurally similar across taxa. These hypotheses are tested using 15 geographically diverse modern human samples, metric and nonmetric traits, and Computed Tomography. Answers to each of these three questions are critical to evaluating whether the linking features are likely to reflect genetic relatedness or some other shared environmental or developmental condition. Without explicit evaluation of the sources of these features, the simple enumeration of features in modern and fossil samples is not phylogenetically interpretable.

HOMO直立和智人之间的关系对于理解现代人的起源至关重要。 存在两种思想流派，其中一种看到了整个旧世界中当地H. h. h. prectus人群的智人的区域进化，而另一种则看到sapiens sapiens起源于非洲，并最终取代了当地的直立人群。 两家学校都使用颅内特征来检查地理区域中的连续性程度，但在对这些特征的重要性的解释上有所不同。 双方都同意，可以在大洋洲进行这种连续性的最佳案例。 这项研究使用比较人的解剖结构来明确测试用于连接印度尼西亚直立性烟草和澳大利亚现代人类的字符是否可能是遗传相关性的良好指标。 要测试的假设是：1）在现代澳大利亚人中与健壮的咀嚼（咀嚼）模式功能相关的链接特征，2）是神经（脑箱）生长的结构后果的特征。 这些假设使用15种地理上多样的现代人类样本，公制和非衡量特征以及计算机断层扫描进行了检验。 这三个问题中的每个问题的答案对于评估链接特征是否可能反映遗传相关性或其他一些共享的环境或发育条件至关重要。 没有明确评估这些特征的来源，现代和化石样品中特征的简单列举在系统发育上是不可解释的。