陕西公王岭蓝田直立人内耳迷路的复原及形态特点

1964年在陕西公王岭发现的蓝田人头骨的形态比周口店直立人和印度尼西亚爪哇直立人原始,其厚重的骨壁及较小的脑量,落入了早期人属成员的变异范围。最新测年结果将蓝田人的生存年代从原先普遍接受的距今115万年提早到大约163万年前,接近能人和南方古猿生存年代变异范围的下限,蓝田人是迄今为止我国发现的有确定年代数据的最早的古人类化石。本文采用高分辨率CT技术对蓝田人的颞骨岩部进行了扫描,对骨性内耳迷路进行了3D虚拟复原,通过与和县直立人、欧洲古老型智人、早期人属成员、南方古猿非洲种、粗壮傍人和现代人内耳迷路的21项测量项目的对比和分析,结果显示蓝田人内耳迷路的测量数据与南方古猿非洲种最接近,其次为现代人和欧洲古老型智人,而与早期人属成员和粗壮傍人相差较大。主成分分析结果显示,蓝田人内耳迷路与早期人属成员、欧洲古老型智人、南方古猿非洲种及现代人都有重叠区域,距离最近的是南方古猿非洲种Sts 5,其次为和县直立人和南方古猿非洲种Sts 19,而与粗壮傍人距离较远。本文研究提供了中更新世中国古人类内耳迷路的形态数据,为进一步探讨蓝田人体质特征演化上的意义提供了参考资料。

The Temporal Bony Labyrinthine Morphology of Lantian Homo erectus from Gongwangling,Shaanxi Province

The morphological features of the Lantian skull found in Gongwangling, Lantian, in 1964, is more primitive than the Homo erectus fossils from Zhoukoudian and Java, Indonesia. The extraordinary thickness of the cranial wall and the rather small cranial capacity make Lantian fall into the variation range of early Homo. The newly dated Lantian fossil to ca. 1.63 Ma BP, close to the lower limit of Homo habilis and Australopithecus variation range is significantly older than the previously supposed date of 1.15 Ma BP. This new date now makes the Lantian the earliest fossil hominin in China. In this paper, we extracted and reconstructed the three-dimensional bony labyrinth image of Lantian’s petrous part of the temporal bone using high-resolution computed tomography (CT) technology. Comparison of this area with the Hexian Homo erectus, four Middle European Pleistocene archaic Homo, four early Homo, four Australopithecus africanus, three Paranthropus robustus and 26 modern humans using 21 measurement variables gives the following results. Measurements of the Lantian labyrinth have most in common with Australopithecus africanus, followed by modern humans and the Middle Pleistocene archaic Homo group. The Lantian specimen differs mostly with early Homo and Paranthropus robustus. According to the results of principal component analysis, the Lantian labyrinth overlaps with those of early Homo, the Middle Pleistocene archaic Homo group, Australopithecus africanus and modern humans. By cluster analysis, the nearest specimen to Lantian is Australopithecus Sts 5, followed by the Hexian Homo erectus and Australopithecus Sts 19, and far away from Paranthropus robustus. This study provides new data on the bony labyrinthine morphology of Middle Pleistocene Chinese human fossils, and supplies new references for exploring the Lantian physical features.