- Titre du projet
- Cortical and Trabecular Bone Biomechanics in the Neandertal Postcranial Skeleton
- Descriptif du projet
- The goal of this project is to use microCT data to characterize the internal and external morphology and biomechanics of the postcranial skeleton of Neandertals and Upper Paleolithic modern humans. Existing high-resolution CT data from Holocene hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists suggest significant differences in overall limb morphology, as assessed with 3D geometric morphometrics. Biomechanical differences are also evident in the cortical and trabecular bone microstructure of the femur, tibia, and humerus which suggests that the behavioral differences are reflected in bone architecture. This project proposes to collect microCT data from several Neandertal and early modern human skeletal elements (femur, tibia, humerus) housed in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle for quantitative comparison with existing scan data from human and non-human primate skeletal material. Analyses will include the quantification of 3D trabecular bone structure in the proximal humerus, proximal and distal femur, and proximal and distal tibia, analysis of the cross-sectional geometric properties of the diaphyseal cortical bone along the entire shaft of each element (where preserved), and an analysis of whole bone shape variation using geometric morphometrics. These three separate techniques will be combined to address questions of mobility and skeletal gracilization in the hominin fossil record using Holocene humans for comparison.
Travaux réalisés par la plateforme AST-RX
