Gunz Philipp, Harvati Katerina
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
J Hum Evol. 2007 Mar;52(3):262-74. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.08.010. Epub 2006 Sep 23.
The occipital bun ("chignon") is cited widely as a Neanderthal derived trait. It encompasses the posterior projection/convexity of the occipital squama and is associated with lambdoid flattening on the parietal. A 'hemibun' in some Upper Paleolithic Europeans is thought by some authors to indicate interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern Europeans. However, 'bunning' is difficult to measure, and the term has been applied to a range of morphological patterns. Furthermore, its usefulness in phylogenetic reconstruction and its homologous status across modern and fossil humans have been disputed. We present a geometric morphometric study that quantitatively evaluates the chignon, assesses its usefulness in separating Neanderthals from modern humans, and its degree of similarity to Upper Paleolithic 'hemibuns.' We measured the three-dimensional coordinates of closely spaced points along the midsagittal plane from bregma to inion and of anatomical landmarks in a large series of recent human crania and several Middle and Late Pleistocene European and African fossils. These coordinate data were processed using the techniques of geometric morphometrics and analyzed with relative warps, canonical variates, and singular warps. Our results show no separation between Neanderthals and modern humans, including early modern Europeans, when the shape of the occipital plane midsagittal-profile is considered alone. On the other hand, Neanderthals are well separated from both recent and fossil modern humans when information about the occipital's relative position and relative size are also included. Furthermore, the occurrence of a highly convex and posteriorly projecting midline occipital profile (interpreted as the occipital bun) is highly correlated (>0.8) with a flat parietal midsagittal profile and with antero-superiorly positioned temporal bones across both our recent and our fossil human samples. We conclude that the shape of the occipital profile alone should not be considered an independent trait, as it is very tightly integrated with braincase shape. Our analysis does not support differences in integration of the posterior midsagittal profile and the cranial base in Pleistocene and recent humans.
枕部发髻（“发髻”）被广泛认为是尼安德特人衍生的特征。它包括枕鳞的后凸/突出，并且与顶骨上的人字缝变平有关。一些作者认为，一些旧石器时代晚期欧洲人的“半发髻”表明尼安德特人与早期现代欧洲人之间存在杂交。然而，“发髻化”很难测量，并且该术语已应用于一系列形态模式。此外，其在系统发育重建中的有用性以及在现代人和化石人类中的同源状态一直存在争议。我们进行了一项几何形态测量研究，定量评估发髻，评估其在区分尼安德特人和现代人方面的有用性，以及它与旧石器时代晚期“半发髻”的相似程度。我们测量了一系列近期人类颅骨以及一些中更新世和晚更新世欧洲及非洲化石中沿矢状中线从额骨到枕骨隆突的紧密间隔点的三维坐标以及解剖标志点。这些坐标数据使用几何形态测量技术进行处理，并通过相对扭曲、典型变量和奇异扭曲进行分析。我们的结果表明，仅考虑枕平面矢状中线轮廓的形状时，尼安德特人与现代人（包括早期现代欧洲人）之间没有区别。另一方面，当也包括枕部的相对位置和相对大小的信息时，尼安德特人与近期和化石现代人都有很好的区分。此外，在我们的近期和化石人类样本中，高度凸出且向后突出的中线枕部轮廓（解释为枕部发髻）与扁平的顶骨矢状中线轮廓以及颞骨前上位置高度相关（>0.8）。我们得出结论，仅枕部轮廓的形状不应被视为一个独立的特征，因为它与脑壳形状紧密结合。我们的分析不支持更新世和近期人类在矢状后中线轮廓和颅底整合方面的差异。
