Stern J T, Jungers W L, Susman R L
Department of Anatomical Sciences, School of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brook 11794-8081, USA.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 1995 May;97(1):1-10. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.1330970102.
It has been generally assumed and theoretically argued that the curvature of finger and toe bones seen in some nonhuman primates is associated with cheiridial use in an arboreal setting. Assessment of such curvature in fossil primates has been used to infer the positional behavior of these animals. Several methods of quantifying curvature of bones have been proposed. The measure most commonly applied to phalanges is that of included angle, but this has come under some criticism. We consider various other approaches for quantifying phalangeal curvature, demonstrating that some are equivalent to use of included angle, but that one--normalized curvature moment arm (NCMA)--represents a true alternative. A comparison of NCMA to included angle, both calculated on manual and pedal proximal phalanges of humans, apes, some monkeys, and the Hadar fossils, revealed that these two different measures of curvature are highly correlated and result in very similar distributional patterns.
人们普遍认为，并从理论上论证，在一些非人类灵长类动物中观察到的手指和脚趾骨的弯曲与在树栖环境中使用手部抓握有关。对化石灵长类动物这种弯曲度的评估已被用于推断这些动物的姿势行为。已经提出了几种量化骨骼弯曲度的方法。最常用于指骨的测量方法是夹角测量法，但这种方法受到了一些批评。我们考虑了量化指骨弯曲度的各种其他方法，结果表明有些方法等同于使用夹角测量法，但有一种方法——归一化曲率力臂（NCMA）——是一种真正的替代方法。对人类、猿类、一些猴子以及哈达尔化石的手部和足部近端指骨计算得出的NCMA与夹角进行比较，结果显示这两种不同的弯曲度测量方法高度相关，并且产生非常相似的分布模式。
