Milella Marco
Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2014 Sep 24;9(9):e107963. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0107963. eCollection 2014.
Entheseal changes have been widely studied with regard to their correlation to biomechanical stress and their usefulness for biocultural reconstructions. However, anthropological and medical studies have demonstrated the marked influence of both age and sex on the development of these features. Studies of entheseal changes are mostly aimed in testing functional hypotheses and are mostly focused on modern humans, with few data available for non-human primates. The lack of comparative studies on the effect of age and sex on entheseal changes represent a gap in our understanding of the evolutionary basis of both development and degeneration of the human musculoskeletal system. The aim of the present work is to compare age trajectories and patterns of sexual dimorphism in entheseal changes between modern humans and African great apes. To this end we analyzed 23 postcranial entheses in a human contemporary identified skeletal collection (N = 484) and compared the results with those obtained from the analysis of Pan (N = 50) and Gorilla (N = 47) skeletal specimens. Results highlight taxon-specific age trajectories possibly linked to differences in life history schedules and phyletic relationships. Robusticity trajectories separate Pan and modern humans from Gorilla, whereas enthesopathic patterns are unique in modern humans and possibly linked to their extended potential lifespan. Comparisons between sexes evidence a decreasing dimorphism in robusticity from Gorilla, to modern humans to Pan, which is likely linked to the role played by size, lifespan and physical activity on robusticity development. The present study confirms previous hypotheses on the possible relevance of EC in the study of life history, pointing moreover to their usefulness in evolutionary studies.
关于附着点变化与生物力学应力的相关性及其在生物文化重建中的作用，已经进行了广泛的研究。然而，人类学和医学研究表明，年龄和性别对这些特征的发展都有显著影响。对附着点变化的研究大多旨在检验功能假设，且主要集中在现代人类身上，关于非人类灵长类动物的数据很少。缺乏关于年龄和性别对附着点变化影响的比较研究，这表明我们在理解人类肌肉骨骼系统发育和退化的进化基础方面存在差距。本研究的目的是比较现代人类和非洲大猿在附着点变化方面的年龄轨迹和性二态性模式。为此，我们分析了一个当代人类骨骼样本（N = 484）中的23个颅后附着点，并将结果与从黑猩猩（N = 50）和大猩猩（N = 47）骨骼标本分析中获得的结果进行比较。结果突出了特定分类群的年龄轨迹，这可能与生活史时间表和系统发育关系的差异有关。粗壮度轨迹将黑猩猩和现代人类与大猩猩区分开来，而附着点病模式在现代人类中是独特的，可能与他们延长的潜在寿命有关。两性之间的比较表明，从大猩猩到现代人类再到黑猩猩，粗壮度的二态性在降低，这可能与体型、寿命和身体活动对粗壮度发展所起的作用有关。本研究证实了先前关于附着点变化在生活史研究中可能相关性的假设，此外还指出了它们在进化研究中的有用性。
