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At least 559 records · Page 31Linked to original sources
PubMed2004

Mental tests and fossils.

This article investigates the origins of the intelligence test item known as the Ball and Field in Lewis M. Terman's Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. The question was initially raised by the resemblance of paleontological ocean bed floor tracings left by ancient creatures to the responses produced by children given the Ball and Field Test. A version of the Ball and Field Test was invented by Clifton F. Hodge, one of Terman's graduate school instructors who devised it as a result of his observations about how birds and other animals navigated and found their way. He then tested how humans and children located hidden objects and found that, in many ways, animals and humans used similar strategies for getting home or finding objects.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Description of a cranial endocast from a fossil platypus, Obdurodon dicksoni (Monotremata, Ornithorhynchidae), and the relevance of endocranial characters to monotreme monophyly.

A digital cranial endocast of the Miocene platypus Obdurodon dicksoni was extracted from high-resolution X-ray computed tomography scans. This endocast represents the oldest from an unequivocal member of either extant monotreme lineage and is therefore important for inferring character support for Monotremata, a clade that is not well diagnosed. We describe the Obdurodon endocast with reference to endocasts extracted from skulls of the three species of extant monotremes, particularly Ornithorhynchus anatinus, the duckbill platypus. We consulted published descriptions and illustrations of whole and sectioned brains of monotremes to determine which external features of the nervous system are represented on the endocasts. Similar to Ornithorhynchus, well-developed parafloccular casts and reduced olfactory bulb casts are present in the Obdurodon endocast. Reduction of the olfactory bulbs in comparison with tachyglossids and therian mammals is a potential apomorphy for Ornithorhynchidae. The trigeminal nuclei, ganglia, and nerves (i.e., trigeminal complex) are enlarged in Obdurodon, as evidenced by their casts on the endocast, as is the case in the extant platypus. The visibility of enlarged trigeminal nucleus casts on the endocasts of Obdurodon and Ornithorhynchus is a possible synapomorphy of Ornithorhynchidae. Electroreception and enlargement of the trigeminal complex are possible synapomorphies for Monotremata.

Animals↗
PubMed1997

Cladistic analysis of dental traits in recent humans using a fossil outgroup.

The relationships between a range of modern human samples are assessed from cladistic analyses of the published population frequencies of tooth crown characters, using new data on the Krapina Neanderthal sample as an outgroup. All of the most parsimonious trees show an early divergence of African and Australasian groups. This result is compared with an alternative dendrogram proposed by Turner (1992). Reconstruction of a hypothetical dental ancestor suggests that the similarities between the African and Australasian groups result from the retention of symplesiomorphous dental traits. Additionally, despite expectations from multiregional evolution, recent Europeans are dentally less like the Krapina Neanderthals than are Africans and Australians.

Africa↗
PubMed2000

Inferring social behavior from sexual dimorphism in the fossil record.

Sexual dimorphism is commonly used as evidence of the behavior of extinct species. Even so, few analyses scrutinize whether extant comparative data support inferences of mating systems or behavior in extinct species. This analysis evaluates the relations between measures of dimorphism and several estimates of mating system and intrasexual competition. Dimorphism alone provides poor resolution for reconstructing behavior. Many behavioral inferences based on perceived dimorphism are not supported by extant comparative data. This reflects the large standard errors of relations between dimorphism estimates and behavioral classifications. Used with caution, dimorphism can provide a hint of the behavior of extinct species in some cases. However, in many cases inferred dimorphism allows little more than an inference of polygyny, without any indication of specific types of mating systems.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

The late Neandertal supraorbital fossils from Vindija Cave, Croatia: a biased sample?

The late Neandertal sample from Vindija (Croatia) has been described as transitional between the earlier Central European Neandertals from Krapina (Croatia) and modern humans. However, the morphological differences indicating this transition may rather be the result of different sex and/or age compositions between the samples. This study tests the hypothesis that the metric differences between the Krapina and Vindija supraorbital samples are due to sampling bias. We focus upon the supraorbital region because past studies have posited this region as particularly indicative of the Vindija sample's transitional nature. Furthermore, the supraorbital region varies significantly with both age and sex. We analyzed four chords and two derived indices of supraorbital torus form as defined by Smith & Ranyard (1980, Am. J. phys. Anthrop.93, pp. 589-610). For each variable, we analyzed relative sample bias of the Krapina and Vindija samples using three sampling methods. In order to test the hypothesis that the Vindija sample contains an over-representation of females and/or young while the Krapina sample is normal or also female/young biased, we determined the probability of drawing a sample of the same size as and with a mean equal to or less than Vindija's from a Krapina-based population. In order to test the hypothesis that the Vindija sample is female/young biased while the Krapina sample is male/old biased, we determined the probability of drawing a sample of the same size as and with a mean equal or less than Vindija's from a generated population whose mean is halfway between Krapina's and Vindija's. Finally, in order to test the hypothesis that the Vindija sample is normal while the Krapina sample contains an over-representation of males and/or old, we determined the probability of drawing a sample of the same size as and with a mean equal to or greater than Krapina's from a Vindija-based population. Unless we assume that the Vindija sample is female/young and the Krapina sample is male/old biased, our results falsify the hypothesis that the metric differences between the Krapina and Vindija samples are due to sample bias.

Animals↗