Spearthrower wrote:Aye, the one pictures does indeed have a fairly pronounced keel, which brings me back to my original point before I even started talking about them; these are idealised constructs. The European descendants here can run their hands over the top of their skull to see if they have a bulge of thickened bone running from front to back. I would assume that the majority would not find a prominent bulge.

For what it's worth, my wife, who is pure north European, has a keel similar to that on the pictured skull; I'm about 50/50 East Asian and European, and the top of my skull is much flatter. Our daughter has a flat skull top like mine; our son has a peaked one like my wife's. I don't know if it's thickened bone or just the parietal bones coming together at an angle; my son is only two months old, so I wouldn't have expected him to have substantial bone thickening at the saggital suture yet.

Speaking of hominid skull morphology, John Hawks does a pretty nice job of comparing the new Au. sebadi skull with other examples of australopithecines previously recovered from the nearby site of Sterkfontein here.
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/sediba/malapa-berger-description-2010.html
Scroll about a third of the way down for the side-by-side skull illos...

You may need to look up some of the terminology, but just the visuals, together with whatever you may be in a position to grok of the accompanying discussion, is eye-opening.

Warren Dew wrote:For what it's worth, my wife, who is pure north European, has a keel similar to that on the pictured skull; I'm about 50/50 East Asian and European, and the top of my skull is much flatter. Our daughter has a flat skull top like mine; our son has a peaked one like my wife's.

Here are pictures to illustrate:

Son with peaked skull:


Daughter at same age, flatter, rounded head:

Interesting. It doesn't look like they have any East Asian in them to me. Maybe you can see some?

Segundo wrote:Interesting. It doesn't look like they have any East Asian in them to me. Maybe you can see some?

What, you don't see the similarity in eye shape to east Asian Anime cartoons?

Okay, just kidding. I agree there isn't a lot in terms of east Asian characteristics in those pictures; I think my daughter's rounded head shape is a little suggestive of it, but it's also within the range for European babies, or probably for babies from anywhere in the world.

I think hints of east Asian features are more visible in my daughter in this more recent picture:



However, that picture also shows that she has a longer skull than would be expected in an east Asian, or at least in a southeast Asian, at that age.

The most obvious way in which she's noneuropean, though, is in how she tans. She tans quite easily even with Boston's limited sunlight - not, I think, what would be expected from her pink skin tone in her picture in my previous post. Unfortunately I have no pictures that clearly illustrate the tanning - and it's getting off topic for this thread, anyway.

Spearthrower wrote:They are seriously cute!

Thanks! In my opinion, my son is cute in the "all babies are cute" sense. My daughter seems to be cute in the "other parents sometimes remark on how cute she in a wistful or envious tone of voice" sense.

At that age, the skull is not yet fused, so you'll need to wait another year or so to see whether your son retains a peaked skull.

Good point.

Spearthrower wrote:

Tyrannical wrote:I would think the Asian / European would be tricky. I think most medical skeletons are Asian, at least the one they had in my HS was.

Australian Aborigine are easy if they have prominent neanderthal like features like a beetle brow.

It would be a miracle if an Australian Aborigine had neanderthal like features!

Maybe not a miracle, just some admixture.

http://www.rational-skepticism.org/evolution/neanderthals-may-have-interbred-with-humans-t5461.html

Tyrannical wrote:

It would be a miracle if an Australian Aborigine had neanderthal like features!

Maybe not a miracle, just some admixture.

http://www.rational-skepticism.org/evolution/neanderthals-may-have-interbred-with-humans-t5461.html

It would still be a miracle if Australian aborigines, at the southeastern extreme of the old world, got any admixture they might have had from neanderthals, whose range was at the northwestern extreme of the old world.

Oh well, then it could be an erectus admixture.

Tyrannical wrote:It's time to play, Spot the Modern Human!
Who is a modern human? Who is extinct archaic human? Can you tell them apart?.....

What an excellent site Tyrranical! Thanks for posting it. I've put it into my favorites/bookmarks folder.
Unfortunately, a few of the images refuse to show, perhaps you can re-upload them.

Warren Dew wrote:All but 1, 2, and 3 lack brow ridges and have modern human temporal shapes, so I'd guess they are at least Homo sapiens; 2 at least has the modern temporal shape, so it may be Homo sapiens as well. No guesses as to differences between archaic sapiens and fully modern sapiens; I can't tell the difference reliably.

Hi Warren, brow ridges are quite common in modern humans, especially males & as they get older.
Can you spot if these are extinct? (apart from the original owner of course!) :