Maass Petra, Friedling Louise Jacqui
Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Free State, 205 Nelson Mandela Drive, Park West, Bloemfontein, 9300; South Africa.
Department of Human Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, Anzio Road, Observatory, Cape Town, 7925, South Africa.
Anthropol Anz. 2020 Nov 30;77(4):345-354. doi: 10.1127/anthranz/2020/1164.
The fibula is often not used for anthropological estimations, as its morphological variation is expected to be insufficient to allow accurate estimations. However, in forensic or archaeological contexts, there is the possibility that the fibula is the only bone available for analysis. The present study applied geometric morphometrics to evaluate the potential of using fibular morphology for assessment of sex and ancestry. Three-dimensional datasets of 1609 fibulae of adult South Africans (412 females, 507 males) were digitized. Datasets were submitted to Generalized Procrustes Analysis for rotation and scaling to a common centroid. Mean centroid sizes were compared using parametric testing, and morphological variation was assessed using multivariate analyses. Discriminant Function Analysis coupled with leave-one-out cross-validation testing was used to assess classification accuracy of sex and ancestry based on these shape variations. Fibulae were smaller in females than males, but show insufficient shape variation to distinguish the sexes. Fibulae of Coloured individuals were relatively and absolutely smaller than those of the Black and White ancestry groups, likely due to contributions of small-bodied groups to the genetic composition of this group. Based on shape variation, ancestry estimations of 72.4-77.2% were obtained. Evaluation of variation according to sex and ancestry combined still produced insufficient distinction between the sexes and decreased the accuracy of ancestry classification. These results show that morphological variation of the fibula may not be useful for sex estimation, but provides reasonable accuracies for ancestry estimations, making it particularly useful in cases where only the fibula is available for analysis.
腓骨通常不用于人类学估计，因为预计其形态变异不足以进行准确估计。然而，在法医或考古背景下，腓骨有可能是唯一可供分析的骨骼。本研究应用几何形态计量学来评估利用腓骨形态进行性别和血统评估的潜力。对1609例成年南非人（412名女性，507名男性）的腓骨三维数据集进行了数字化处理。将数据集提交给广义普罗克拉斯分析，以进行旋转和缩放至共同质心。使用参数检验比较平均质心大小，并使用多变量分析评估形态变异。判别函数分析结合留一法交叉验证测试用于评估基于这些形状变异的性别和血统分类准确性。女性的腓骨比男性小，但形状变异不足以区分性别。有色人种个体的腓骨相对和绝对小于黑人和白人血统群体的腓骨，这可能是由于体型较小的群体对该群体基因组成的贡献。基于形状变异，获得了72.4%-77.2%的血统估计值。根据性别和血统组合对变异进行评估，仍然无法充分区分性别，并降低了血统分类的准确性。这些结果表明，腓骨的形态变异可能对性别估计无用，但对血统估计提供了合理的准确性，使其在只有腓骨可供分析的情况下特别有用。
