The Mousterian child from Teshik‐Tash is a Neanderthal: A geometric morphometric study of the frontal bone

In the 1930s subadult hominin remains and Mousterian artifacts were discovered in the Teshik‐Tash cave in South Uzbekistan. Since then, the majority of the scientific community has interpreted Teshik‐Tash as a Neanderthal. However, some have considered aspects of the morphology of the Teshik‐Tash skull to be more similar to fossil modern humans such as those represented at Skhūl and Qafzeh, or to subadult Upper Paleolithic modern humans. Here we present a 3D geometric morphometric analysis of the Teshik‐Tash frontal bone in the context of developmental shape changes in recent modern humans, Neanderthals, and early modern humans. We assess the phenetic affinities of Teshik‐Tash to other subadult fossils, and use developmental simulations to predict possible adult shapes. We find that the morphology of the frontal bone places the Teshik‐Tash child close to other Neanderthal children and that the simulated adult shapes are closest to Neanderthal adults. Taken together with genetic data showing that Teshik‐Tash carried mtDNA of the Neanderthal type, as well as its occipital bun, and its shovel‐shaped upper incisors, these independent lines of evidence firmly place Teshik‐Tash among Neanderthals. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.