Titel
Sacrum morphology supports taxonomic heterogeneity of “Australopithecus africanus” at Sterkfontein Member 4
Autor*in
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Abstract
The presence of multiple Australopithecus species at Sterkfontein Member 4, South Africa (2.07–2.61 Ma), is highly contentious, and quantitative assessments of craniodental and postcranial variability remain inconclusive. Using geometric morphometrics, we compared the sacrum of the small-bodied, presumed female subadult Australopithecus africanus skeleton Sts 14 to the large, alleged male adult StW 431 against a geographically diverse sample of modern humans, and two species of Pan, Gorilla, and Pongo. The probabilities of sampling morphologies as distinct as Sts 14 and StW 431 from a single species ranged from 1.3 to 2.5% for the human sample, and from 0.0 to 4.5% for the great apes, depending on the species and the analysis. Sexual dimorphism and developmental or geologic age could not adequately explain the differences between StW 431 and Sts 14, suggesting that they are unlikely to be conspecific. This supports earlier claims of taxonomic heterogeneity at Sterkfontein Member 4.
Stichwort
Biological anthropologyTaxonomy
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
Erschienen in
Titel
Communications Biology
Band
4
Ausgabe
1
ISSN
2399-3642
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Publication
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Zugänglichkeit
Rechte
Rechteangabe
© The Author(s) 2021
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