Technical note: A novel geometric morphometric approach to the study of long bone shape variation |
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Authors: | Mélanie A. Frelat Stanislav Katina Gerhard W. Weber Fred L. Bookstein |
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Affiliation: | 1. Dipartimento di Storie e Metodi per la Conservazione dei Beni Culturali, University of Bologna, 48121 Ravenna, Italy;2. UMR 7268, University of Aix‐Marseille – EFS ‐ CNRS, 13334 Marseille, France;3. Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlá?ská 2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic;4. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlá?ská 2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic;5. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QW, UK;6. Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna, Althanstrasse 14, 1090 Vienna, Austria;7. Department of Statistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195‐4322 |
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Abstract: | Procrustes‐based geometric morphometrics (GM) is most often applied to problems of craniofacial shape variation. Here, we demonstrate a novel application of GM to the analysis of whole postcranial elements in a study of 77 hominoid tibiae. We focus on two novel methodological improvements to standard GM approaches: 1) landmark configurations of tibiae including 15 epiphyseal landmarks and 483 semilandmarks along articular surfaces and muscle insertions along the tibial shaft and 2) an artificial affine transformation that sets moments along the shaft equal to the sum of the moments estimated in the other two anatomical directions. Diagrams of the principal components of tibial shapes support most differences between human and non‐human primates reported previously. The artificial affine transformation proposed here results in an improved clustering of the great apes that may prove useful in future discriminant or clustering studies. Since the shape variations observed may be related to different locomotor behaviors, posture, or activity patterns, we suggest that this method be used in functional analyses of tibiae or other long bones in modern populations or fossil specimens. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
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Keywords: | tibia hominoids semilandmarks artificial affine transformation locomotion |
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