Phenotypic diversity and history of the Congo Basin populations: Equatorial Guinea, Bantu Speaking Central Africans and African Pygmies.

Background: African Pygmy Populations (APP) are believed to be one of the first groups of the Congo Basin rainforest peoples to separate from the rest of modern humanity. The arrival of Bantu speaking agriculturalists from 5,000 BP led to the formation of a large number of ethnic complexes in Central Africa and the Atlantic coastal area, mainly due to a one-way flow of pygmy women. There are now only a few small contingents of African Pygmy population groups who are mixed or who have almost disappeared as a result of migratory flows from Cameroon.

Application of the recent SanMillán-Rissech acetabular adult aging method in a North American sample.

Recently, a renewed acetabular aging methodology was published by San-Millán et al. (Int J Leg Medicine, 47, 131: 501-525), refining the variables associated with acetabular fossa aging in different populations. Due to its novelty, this method has not yet been examined in any other population, other than it was developed and originally tested on.

Quantitative discrimination of deformation in Fueguian crania.

Objectives: Artificial deformation of the cranium in humans has been related to powerful environmental-cultural stimuli that modify vectors of growth and development when the cranium is still malleable. Osteological differentiation into deformed and nondeformed remains enables the morphological information of individuals that make up ethnic groups or populations to be separately contrasted, the invariant measurements of deformation to be identified, the information provided by archeological remains to be placed in a social context, the cranial variation to be related to genetic variation (individuals without deformation), and predictions to be made (in the absence of direct genetic information).

Methods: With samples of reduced size and many variables, we propose a decision rule based on: (a) pre-selecting variables (Kruskal-Wallis and Λ-Wilks test); (b) applying logistic regression to obtain the optimal classification criterion; and (c) defining a multi-criterion decision rule to bring about greater robustness.

Reliability of the Greulich and Pyle method for chronological age estimation and age majority prediction in a Spanish sample.

Estimating the forensic age of living individuals is ever more important in forensic practice, due to the ongoing increase of migratory flows, amongst other causes. Using the Greulich and Pyle method on a sample of 1150 individuals of the Spanish population (n = 560, 0-18 years for girls, and n = 590, 0-19 years for boys), the mean difference between the bone and chronological ages was obtained: 0.01 years (- 0.

Fueguian crania and the circum-Pacific rim variation.

Objectives: The Fueguians are descendants of the first settlers of America, a 'relict' isolated geographically for 10,000 years. We compared their cranial variation with other Americans, and samples from Asia and Australia to know whether the modern extinct Fueguians can be considered Paleoamericans or not.

Materials And Methods: Herein we study 176 Fuego-Patagonian skulls, the largest cranial sample to be studied, refined and well documented, using CVA, and the D of Mahalanobis.