Human foot bones from Klasies River main site, South Africa
| Autor: | Jeffrey H. Schwartz, G. Philip Rightmire, Ian Tattersall, H. J. Deacon |
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| Rok vydání: | 2005 |
| Předmět: |
Male
education.field_of_study geography.geographical_feature_category Pleistocene Foot Fossils Population Postcrania Archaeology Skull Paleontology South Africa Geography medicine.anatomical_structure Cave Human evolution Anthropology medicine Humans Female Middle Stone Age education Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Holocene Metatarsal Bones |
| Zdroj: | Journal of human evolution. 50(1) |
| ISSN: | 0047-2484 |
| Popis: | The caves at Klasies River contain abundant archaeological evidence relating to human evolution in the late Pleistocene of southern Africa. Along with Middle Stone Age artifacts, animal bones, and other food waste, there are hominin cranial fragments, mandibles with teeth, and a few postcranial remains. Three foot bones can now be added to this inventory. An adult first metatarsal is similar in size and discrete anatomical features to those from Holocene burials in the Cape Province. A complete and well-preserved second metatarsal is especially long and heavy at midshaft in comparison to all Holocene and more recent South African homologues. A large fifth metatarsal is highly distinctive in its morphology. In overall size, these pedal elements resemble specimens from late Pleistocene sites in western Asia, but there are some differences in proportions. The fossils support earlier suggestions concerning a relatively high level of sexual dimorphism in the African Middle Stone Age population. Squatting facets on the two lateral metatarsals appear to indicate a high frequency of kneeling among members of this group. The new postcranial material also underlines the fact that the morphology of particular skeletal elements of some of the 100,000-year-old Klasies River individuals falls outside the range of modern variation. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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