Mandibular shape and diet in extant primates: a 3D geometric morphometric analysis.

Establishing a link between mandibular morphology and diet in extant primates has long been a goal in biological anthropology because it should provide important insight into the diets of extinct primates, including fossil hominins. To date, efforts to explore this question have produced mixed results, largely perhaps due to a reliance on the use of 2D morphological data. Here, we report a study where we investigated whether 3D shape data would provide a clearer picture.

A 3D basicranial shape-based assessment of local and continental northwest European ancestry among 5th to 9th century CE Anglo-Saxons.

The settlement of Great Britain by Germanic-speaking people from continental northwest Europe in the Early Medieval period (early 5th to mid 11th centuries CE) has long been recognised as an important event, but uncertainty remains about the number of settlers and the nature of their relationship with the preexisting inhabitants of the island. In the study reported here, we sought to shed light on these issues by using 3D shape analysis techniques to compare the cranial bases of Anglo-Saxon skeletons to those of skeletons from Great Britain that pre-date the Early Medieval period and skeletons from Denmark that date to the Iron Age. Analyses that focused on Early Anglo-Saxon skeletons indicated that between two-thirds and three-quarters of Anglo-Saxon individuals were of continental northwest Europe ancestry, while between a quarter and one-third were of local ancestry.

The composition of the founding population of Iceland: A new perspective from 3D analyses of basicranial shape.

The settlement of Iceland in the Viking Age has been the focus of much research, but the composition of the founding population remains the subject of debate. Some lines of evidence suggest that almost all the founding population were Scandinavian, while others indicate a mix of Scandinavians and people of Scottish and Irish ancestry. To explore this issue further, we used three-dimensional techniques to compare the basicrania of skeletons from archaeological sites in Iceland, Scandinavia, and the British Isles.

Spondylolysis and spinal adaptations for bipedalism: The overshoot hypothesis.

Background And Objectives: The study reported here focused on the aetiology of spondylolysis, a vertebral pathology usually caused by a fatigue fracture. The goal was to test the Overshoot Hypothesis, which proposes that people develop spondylolysis because their vertebral shape is at the highly derived end of the range of variation within .

Methodology: We recorded 3D data on the final lumbar vertebrae of and three great ape species, and performed three analyses.

3D shape analyses of extant primate and fossil hominin vertebrae support the ancestral shape hypothesis for intervertebral disc herniation.

Background: Recently we proposed an evolutionary explanation for a spinal pathology that afflicts many people, intervertebral disc herniation (Plomp et al. [2015] BMC Evolutionary Biology 15, 68). Using 2D data, we found that the bodies and pedicles of lower vertebrae of pathological humans were more similar in shape to those of chimpanzees than were those of healthy humans.

Frequency and patterns of costovertebral osteoarthritis in two Medieval English populations.

Osteoarthritis is one of the most frequently identified lesions in palaeopathological research. It has been extensively studied by both bioarchaeologists and medical researchers for decades, yet the aetiology of osteoarthritis remains unclear. One of the most important aspects of osteoarthritic studies is identifying the distribution patterns of the condition throughout the skeleton.

The ancestral shape hypothesis: an evolutionary explanation for the occurrence of intervertebral disc herniation in humans.

Background: Recent studies suggest there is a relationship between intervertebral disc herniation and vertebral shape. The nature of this relationship is unclear, however. Humans are more commonly afflicted with spinal disease than are non-human primates and one suggested explanation for this is the stress placed on the spine by bipedalism.

Vertebral morphology influences the development of Schmorl's nodes in the lower thoracic vertebrae.

Schmorl's nodes are the result of herniations of the nucleus pulposus into the adjacent vertebral body and are commonly identified in both clinical and archaeological contexts. The current study aims to identify aspects of vertebral shape that correlate with Schmorl's nodes. Two-dimensional statistical shape analysis was performed on digital images of the lower thoracic spine (T10-T12) of adult skeletons from the late medieval skeletal assemblages from Fishergate House, York, St.