Nasal floor variation among eastern eurasian pleistocene Homo

Xiu Jie Wu, Scott D. Maddux, Lei Pan, Erik Trinkaus

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

A bi-level nasal floor, although present in most Pleistocene and recent human samples, reaches its highest frequency among the western Eurasian Neandertals and has been considered a feature distinctive of them. Early modern humans, in contrast, tend to feature a level (or sloping) nasal floor. Sufficiently intact maxillae are rare among eastern Eurasian Pleistocene humans, but several fossils provide nasal floor configurations. The available eastern Eurasian Late Pleistocene early modern humans have predominantly level nasal floors, similar to western early modern humans. Of the four observable eastern Eurasian archaic Homo maxillae (Sangiran 4, Chaoxian 1, Xujiayao 1, and Changyang 1), three have the bi-level pattern and the fourth is scored as bi-level/sloping. It therefore appears that bi-level nasal floors were common among Pleistocene archaic humans, and a high frequency of them is not distinctive of the Neandertals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)217-226
Number of pages10
JournalAnthropological Science
Volume120
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012

Keywords

  • Asia
  • Maxilla
  • Neandertal
  • Noses
  • Palate

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Nasal floor variation among eastern eurasian pleistocene Homo'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this