Thickness Mapping of the Occipital Bone on CT-data –- a New Approach Applied on OH 9

Abstract

A new approach for the analysis of cranial bone thickness is introduced. The study focuses on the occipital bone of modern humans and of a 1.25 Myr-old H. ergaster/erectus specimen from Olduvai Gorge (OH 9). A semiautomatic algorithm detects a multitude of thicknesses from CT-data of the investigated bones. We find that every bone is characterized by its own distribution pattern of cranial thickness, which is then analyzed statistically. The results demonstrate that the thickness distribution of the occipital bone of OH 9 is within the normal range of the H. sapiens sample (which itself shows a remarkably high variance). This contributes to a further analysis of phyletic differences of hominid morphology by including distribution patterns of thickness combined with aspects of functional anatomy