Neonatal postcrania from Mezmaiskaya, Russia, and Le Moustier, France, and the development of Neandertal body form
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Significance: One of the oldest questions in human evolutionary studies is: why do Neandertals look different from present-day and ancient modern humans? This question can be addressed at different levels, but a critical component of a complete answer is understanding the developmental basis of adult differences. We now know that many skull differences are present by the time of birth. We know less, however, about the developmental basis of differences in the rest of the body. By studying the two most complete Neandertal neonates, we were able to establish that, as for the skull, many differences in body form are present by the time of birth. Neandertals largely look like Neandertals, regardless of age.
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Neandertal body shape features were already observable in El Sidrón J1 at 7.7 years.
“The height-for-age of El Sidrón J1 also fell within the range of modern humans(11) (Fig. 3B), with Neandertal body shape features already observable at 7.7 years(12, 13) (Fig. 3C).”
From The growth pattern of Neandertals, reconstructed from a juvenile skeleton from El Sidrón (Spain) (2017) · cites this paper as [13]
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The growth pattern of Neandertals, reconstructed from a juvenile skeleton from El Sidrón (Spain)
Rosas, A., Ríos, L., Estalrrich, A., Liversidge, H., García-Tabernero, A., Huguet, R., Cardoso, H., Bastir, M., Lalueza-Fox, C., de la Rasilla, M., et al. (2017) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aan6463 · Cited by 112 · see citing works
- Authors
- Weaver, T. D., Coqueugniot, H., Golovanova, L. V., Doronichev, V. B., Maureille, B., & Hublin, J.-J.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (DE)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Laboratory of Prehistory, St. Petersburg 199034, Russia
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2016-05-23
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 23
- Pages
- 6472-6477
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC4988559
- OpenAlex
- W2402117556
- Cited by
- 64
- References
- 74
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 44.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Leiden Repository (Leiden University) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Smithsonian Institution
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR- 10-LABX-52, 10-LABX-52, ANR-10)
- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Conseil Régional Aquitaine (ANR-10-LABX-52)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Geometry and Topology › Morphological variations and asymmetry
- Keywords
- body shape evolution, morphometrics
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Anthropometry, Bone and Bones, Female, France, Humans, Male, Russia, Neanderthals
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