Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Department of Archeology, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2020 Nov;173(3):480-499. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.24090. Epub 2020 Jun 11.
While many attempts have been made to estimate body mass in hominins from lower limb bone dimensions, the upper limb has received far less attention in this regard. Here we develop new body mass estimation equations based on humeral articular breadths in a large modern human sample and apply them to 95 Plio-Pleistocene specimens.
Humeral head superoinferior and total distal articular mediolateral breadths were measured in a morphologically diverse sample of 611 modern human skeletons whose body masses were estimated from bi-iliac breadth and reconstructed stature. Reduced major axis regressions were used to compute body mass estimation equations. Consistency of the resulting estimates with those derived previously using lower limb bone equations was assessed in matched Plio-Pleistocene individuals or samples.
In the modern reference sample, the new humeral body mass estimation equations exhibit only slightly lower precision compared to the previously derived lower limb bone equations. They give generally similar estimates for Pleistocene Homo, after accounting for the different shape of the humeral head articular surface in archaic Middle and Late Pleistocene Homo, except for distal humeral estimates for Late Pleistocene specimens, which average somewhat below lower limb estimates. Humeral equations give body mass estimates for australopiths that appear much too high, except for Australopithecus sediba. A chimpanzee-based distal humeral articular formula appears to work well for larger australopith specimens.
The new formulae provide a more secure foundation for estimating hominin body mass from humeri than previously available equations.
虽然已经有许多尝试利用下肢骨尺寸来估计人类的体质量，但上肢在这方面受到的关注要少得多。在这里，我们基于大量现代人类样本的肱骨关节宽度开发了新的体质量估计方程，并将其应用于 95 个上新世-更新世标本。
在一个形态多样的 611 例现代人类骨骼样本中测量了肱骨头部的上下和整个远端关节的内外宽度，这些骨骼的体质量是根据双髂宽和重建身高来估计的。采用缩减主轴回归来计算体质量估计方程。通过匹配上新世-更新世个体或样本，评估所得估计值与先前使用下肢骨方程得出的估计值的一致性。
在现代参考样本中，新的肱骨体质量估计方程与之前推导的下肢骨方程相比，仅显示出略微较低的精度。在考虑到古老的中更新世和晚更新世人类肱骨关节面的不同形状后，它们为更新世人类提供了大致相似的估计值，除了晚更新世标本的远端肱骨估计值略低于下肢估计值。对于南方古猿，肱骨方程给出的体质量估计值似乎过高，除了南方古猿 sediba 之外。一个基于黑猩猩的远端肱骨关节公式似乎对较大的南方古猿标本效果很好。
与以前可用的方程相比，新公式为从肱骨估计人类的体质量提供了更可靠的基础。
