neanderthal pelvis size

[thuur khan]

Wanted : informations about measures concerning neanderthal pelvis.
Thank you.

[Daryl Habel]

I can't say positively that they have the measures you need, (since I haven't read them) but I googled the following three references on the Kebara pelvis, which is the only near-complete Neanderthal example.  They probably all have a table of measures.

Rak Y. On the differences between two pelvises of Mousterian context from the Qafzeh and Kebara caves, Israel.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 1990 Mar;81(3):323-32.
[abstract]
Two pelvises from a similar archaeological context have been discovered in recent years in two different caves in Israel. The pelvis from the Qafzeh cave (Qafzeh 9) was dated by means of thermoluminescence at approximately 95 kyr BP. All available measurement values, the most significant being those of the diagnostic obturator region, fall within those of the modern range. The other pelvis emanates from the Kebara cave and differs fundamentally from modern pelvises and from the Qafzeh specimen, although the Kebara pelvis is 30,000 years younger than the latter. As in other remains of Neandertal pelvises, the superior pubic ramus of the Kebara hominid is extremely long and slender and exhibits a cross section unlike that of modern humans. The absolute height of the obturator region is very small. It is these measurements and proportions that set the Kebara pelvis apart from both modern pelvises and the specimen from Qafzeh. The morphological differences and the chronological relationship between the two fossil pelvises support the concept of two distinct evolutionary lineages for these hominids.
 

Rak Y, Arensburg B. Kebara 2 Neanderthal pelvis: first look at a complete inlet.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 1987 Jun;73(2):227-31.
[abstract]
The renewed excavations at the Kebara Cave revealed a Neanderthal skeleton dated at about 50-55,000 years B.P. The pelvis of this individual is the most intact Neanderthal pelvis yet discovered, presenting for the first time a complete inlet. Although the superior pubic ramus is extremely long, as typically seen in the Neanderthals, the size of the pelvic inlet is comparable to that of modern Homo sapiens. The length of the superior pubic ramus is found to stem from a more externally rotated innominate bone and not, as generally assumed, from the larger pelvic inlet. It is suggested that the uniqueness of the Neanderthal pelvis may be attributable to locomotion and posture-related biomechanics rather than to obstetric requirements.
 
Tague RG. Sexual dimorphism in the human bony pelvis, with a consideration of the Neandertal pelvis from Kebara Cave, Israel.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 1992 May;88(1):1-21.
[abstract]
Sexual dimorphism of the human pelvis is inferentially related to obstetrics. However, researchers disagree in the identification and obstetric significance of pelvic dimorphisms. This study addresses three issues. First, common patterns in dimorphism are identified by analysis of pelvimetrics from six independent samples (Whites and Blacks of known sex and four Amerindian samples of unknown sex). Second, an hypothesis is tested that the index of pelvic dimorphism (female mean x 100/male mean) is inversely related to pelvic variability. Third, the pelvic dimensions of the Neandertal male from Kebara cave, Israel are compared with those of the males in this study. The results show that the pelvic inlet is the plane of least dimorphism in humans. The reason that reports often differ in the identification of dimorphisms for this pelvic plane is that both the length of the pubis and the shape of the inlet are related to nutrition. The dimensions of the pelvis that are most dimorphic (that is, female larger than male) are the measures of posterior space, angulation of sacrum, biischial breadth, and subpubic angle. Interestingly, these dimensions are also the most variable. The hypothesis that variability and dimorphism are inversely related fails to be supported. The factors that influence pelvic variability are discussed. The Kebara 2 pelvis has a spacious inlet and a confined outlet relative to modern males, though the circumferences of both planes in the Neandertal are within the range of variation of modern males. The inference is that outlet circumference in Neandertal females is also small in size, but within the range of variation of modern females. Arguments that Neandertal newborns were larger in size than those of modern humans necessarily imply that birth was more difficult in Neandertals.


There's also a pelvis from the Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca) site.  I think I have that paper, so I'll dig it out and post later after I read it.  It might have more references.

Dar

[Daryl Habel]

The Sima de los Huesos ref is (sorry, I don't have access to it):

Nature. 1999 May 20;399(6733):255-8.
 
A complete human pelvis from the Middle Pleistocene of Spain.

Arsuaga JL, Lorenzo C, Carretero JM, Gracia A, Martinez I, Garcia N, Bermudez de Castro JM, Carbonell E.

Departamento de Paleontologia, Instituto de Geologia Economica, Facultad de Ciencias Geologicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. azara@eucmax.sim.ucm.es

The Middle Pleistocene site of Sima de los Huesos in Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain, has yielded around 2,500 fossils from at least 33 different hominid individuals. These have been dated at more than 200,000 years ago and have been classified as ancestors of Neanderthals. An almost complete human male pelvis (labelled Pelvis 1) has been found, which we associate with two fragmentary femora. Pelvis 1 is robust and very broad with a very long superior pubic ramus, marked iliac flare, and a long femoral neck. This pattern is probably the primitive condition from which modern humans departed. A modern human newborn would pass through the birth canal of Pelvis 1 and this would be even larger in a female individual. We estimate the body mass of this individual at 95 kg or more. Using the cranial capacities of three specimens from Sima de los Huesos, the encephalization quotients are substantially smaller than in Neanderthals and modern humans.

[thuur khan]

thank you very much. So Neanderthal inlet and outlet were within the range of variation of those of AMHs. But what about Neanderthal newborns ? Tague said they were bigger than modern babies. Really ?

[Daryl Habel]

thank you very much. So Neanderthal inlet and outlet were within the range of variation of those of AMHs. But what about Neanderthal newborns ? Tague said they were bigger than modern babies. Really ?

I don't know anything more than what Tague's abstract says, which is: " Arguments that Neandertal newborns were larger in size than those of modern humans necessarily imply that birth was more difficult in Neandertals. "

Apparently someone has argued that Neandertal newborns were larger, but I don't have any information on size of Neandertal newborn babies.

Tague's abstract reads more like speculation that Neandertal newborns were larger, in which case birth would be more difficult.  But whether or not there is real data on Neandertal newborn baby sizes is something I simply don't know.  I'd also like to know the answer to that question.

Does anyone know?
Dar

 

[thuur khan]

Thank you.

I've read

CLICK HERE FOR URL

 that :

"The two most complete pelves from early Homo, the Nariokotome adolescent WT15000 (WALKER and RUFF 1993) and the Kebara Neandertal (RAK and ARENSBURG 1987), are both usually classified as male. Fewer than 30 fragmentary specimens constitute the rest of the Pleistocene record up to the Upper Paleolithic transition."

and  

"No neonatal individual cranial bones, let alone complete neonate fossil crania, exist from this period" (TILLIER, ANNE-MARIE. 1992. Reproductive patterns in Neanderthals: A source for critical analysis. Collegium Antropologicum 16:53 58).

Is it possible to have an approximative idea of the size of the head of the Neanderthal newborn and of the duration of the Neanderthal pregnancy? Perhaps another fossil was discovered since 1992 ! Erik Trinkaus thought Neanderthal pregnancy was longer than  modern one, but later (after the discovery of Kebara) Chris Stringer wrote  the contrary. The fossil of Arcy sur Cure is 12 months old. But it's only a temporal bone.

Thank you

thuur.khan

[thuur khan]

Since 1994 in Sidrón cave, in the Asturian county of Piloña (Northern Spain), more than a hundred bones were collected. The first results were made public through three reports presented at the XI Congress of the Spanish Society of Biological Anthropology (SEAB), held in Santiago de Compostela in September 1999. Three new reports were presented in the XII Congress of the Society, held in July 2001 in Barcelona. All skeletal parts are represented in the Sidrón assemblage. The different studies carried out until present allow to assess the presence of a newborn, an infant, a juvenile, and two adults. All of them can be related to the heildebergensis-neanderthalensis phyletic lineage. Their morphology agrees with the model of early Neanderthals, such as Krapina. The mandibles present a certain degree of similarity with Krapina 2, as well as with the fossils of Arago II and Sima de los Huesos.

Does anybody got the measures of the Sidrón newborn's  head ?

[thuur khan]

Another Neanderthal baby was discovered : the remarkably well-preserved, nearly complete skeleton from the Mezmaiskaya cave, 60 kilometres off the eastern coast of the Black Sea in the northern Caucusus, 1,300 metres above sea level. Identified as an infant ranging between the ages of a seven-month-old stillborn fetus to a two-month-old newborn. It is only the second Neanderthal specimen ever recovered to contain analyzable DNA - a condition Goodwin attributes to the coolness of the high altitude, and to the fact that the bones were apparently purposely buried.

Does anybody got the cephalic measures of this baby ?

Thank you

[thuur khan]

Another one : The rare, nearly complete skeleton of a Neanderthal newborn lost to science for almost 90 years has been found at a French museum.

It's thought the skeleton is a four-month-old baby who died about 40,200 years ago, and which is missing only the shoulder blades and pubic bone.

The infant's bones were found in 1914 in rocky sediments along the Vezere River in Dordogne, southwest France. The fossil find from the site at Le Moustier was originally described in a 1921 study, but the bones vanished.

They remained at the National Museum of Pre-history in Les Eyzies, Dordogne.

Bruno Maureille of the University of Bordeaux in Talence, France, stumbled on the unlabelled bones in 1996 while he was cataloguing the museum's archives. He is sure that the skeleton is Neanderthal.

Maureille's paper appears in the journal Nature.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

I don't know anything more than what Tague's abstract says, which is: " Arguments that Neandertal newborns were larger in size than those of modern humans necessarily imply that birth was more difficult in Neandertals. "

Apparently someone has argued that Neandertal newborns were larger, but I don't have any information on size of Neandertal newborn babies.

Tague's abstract reads more like speculation that Neandertal newborns were larger, in which case birth would be more difficult.  But whether or not there is real data on Neandertal newborn baby sizes is something I simply don't know.  I'd also like to know the answer to that question.

Does anyone know?
Dar

Dar,

Thanks for bringing this up. Like you, I haven’t read the paper, but if it does carry on with the notion “that birth was more difficult in Neandertals”, then, there is a problem and this, regardless of the purported dimensions of Neanderthal women pelvises and that of their  babies at birth. “Difficult” relative to exactly what standard(s)? Those of modern, western society, perhaps? Given the relatively long and successful tenure of the Neanderthals, of their immediate ancestors and, some would like to think, of their descendants, one has to assume, logically, that they (the women) were, on the average, evolutionarily well equipped and prepared, biologically (sensu lato) and culturally speaking, to give birth, and it goes without saying that the biological component, i.e., the preparedness for birth, also held true for the emerging babies. Now, while I perfectly understand the need for carrying out increasingly detailed studies such as the one under discussion, I think that such studies would gain much credibility by avoiding arguments based, in part, on what I would call “value judgment fallacies”.

Jacques

[thuur khan]

However I would add the names of Shanidar (a baby in Zagros Mounts, Kurdistan, Iraq : length = 1' 3'') and L'Hortus (Valflaunès, Hérault, France).

Did La Ferrassie 4bis really exist ? The right humerus and femur called LF4bis are now considered as these of Le Moustier 2. Is there another baby at La Ferrassie ?

The really question is about the cranial circumference of the neanderthal neonates. Thank you.

[Dale Hoogeveen]

Neonate human skulls are mallable or there would be very few successful deliveries at all.  Neanderthal adult elongated heads may very well have an infant analogy that fascilitated delivery of crania over the same volume capacity in a more rounded recent infants head.

There is an additional consideration in that continuing relative lack of human mtDNA diversity even following massive population increases points to a relatively smaller percentage of human females in each generation producing replacement that in most mammals including Pan.  That means more infants per productive mother.  Subsequent mammalian births to the same mother are usually less difficult that the first.  Actual size in general becomes less of a concern than getting through the first actual delivery successfully and probably even getting the first pregnancy started in the first place.

We remain a species with substantial fertility problems even with the starch subsidy of modern agricultural diets.  Paleolithic humans would not have had that subsidy, and may very well have had increased fertility problems, especially in regard to maintenance of sufficient female fat levels for regular cycling,  which would not necessarily even been a maladjustment depending on what sizes of their populations their ecologies could carry.

Dale

However I would add the names of Shanidar (a baby in Zagros Mounts, Kurdistan, Iraq : length = 1' 3'') and L'Hortus (Valflaunès, Hérault, France).

Did La Ferrassie 4bis really exist ? The right humerus and femur called LF4bis are now considered as these of Le Moustier 2. Is there another baby at La Ferrassie ?

The really question is about the cranial circumference of the neanderthal neonates. Thank you.