Department of Anatomical Sciences, School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-8081, USA.
J Hum Evol. 2011 Jan;60(1):58-69. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.09.004. Epub 2010 Nov 12.
The morphology of the Olduvai Hominid (OH) 8 foot and the sequence of metatarsal epiphyseal fusion in modern humans and chimpanzees support the hypothesis that OH 8 belonged to an individual of approximately the same relative age as the OH 7 subadult, the holotype of Homo habilis. Modern humans and chimpanzees exhibit a variety of metatarsal epiphyseal fusion patterns, including one identical to that observed in OH 8 in which metatarsal 1 fuses before metatarsals 2-5. More than the metatarsal fusion sequence, however, the principal evidence of the youthful age of OH 8 lies in the morphology of metatarsals 1, 2, and 3. Because both OH 8 and OH 7 come from the same stratum at the FLK NN type site, the most parsimonious explanation of the OH 8 and OH 7 data is that this material belonged to the same individual, as originally proposed by Louis Leakey. The proposition that OH 8 belonged to an adult is unsupported by morphology, including radiographic evidence, and the fusion sequences in human and chimpanzee skeletal material reported here and in the literature.
奥杜威古人类（OH）8 号足的形态和现代人及黑猩猩的跖骨骨骺融合序列支持了以下假说，即 OH 8 号足属于与 OH 7 号未成年个体（能人模式标本）大致相同相对年龄的个体。现代人及黑猩猩的跖骨骨骺融合模式多种多样，其中一种与 OH 8 号足相同，即第一跖骨先融合，然后是第二至第五跖骨。然而，OH 8 号足年轻的主要证据不仅在于其跖骨 1、2 和 3 的形态，还在于其融合序列。由于 OH 8 号足和 OH 7 号足都来自 FLK NN 类型地点的同一地层，因此，最合理的解释是这些材料属于同一个体，正如路易斯·利基最初提出的那样。形态学，包括影像学证据，以及这里和文献中报告的人类和黑猩猩骨骼材料的融合序列，都不支持 OH 8 号足属于成年人的观点。
