The morphological study was carried out to record and analyse the morphological characters of H. diadema
from four different populations in Malaysia (Peninsular Malaysia, South and North Sarawak, Sabah). Nine
external, 17 craniodental characters were measured and analysed using the multivariate analysis and
discriminant function analysis (DFA) using the SPSS Version 20.0 software. Cluster analysis was done using
Paleontological Statistic (PAST) version 2.17. The external and craniodental characters were analysed
separately. For external character, the highest character loading for both Function 1 and 2 was forearm (FA),
whereas for Function 3 it was tibia (TL). For internal character, the highest character loading for Function 1,
2, and 3 were great skull length (GSL), palatal length (PL), and postpalatal length (PPL). These internal
characters are cranial characters which two of them are related to palatal length. These findings establish the
morphological variation between four geographically separate populations of H. diadema within Malaysia
