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Climatic variation in human choanal shape: A 3D geometric morphometric study
Author(s) -
Pagano Anthony Santino,
Yuan Derek,
Fischer Daniel,
Laitman Jeffrey T.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.27.1_supplement.519.3
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , geography , population , crania , biology , geology , anatomy , demography , archaeology , sociology
There has been considerable study on climatic diversity in human piriform aperture dimensions but relatively little on the posterior nares or choanae. This study quantified shape differences in choanal morphology between two broad groups of “cold” and “tropical” climate human populations. The former consisted of Alaskan Inuits, Aleutian Islanders, Northern Chinese, and Northern Europeans (n=131) while the latter group was comprised of East and West Africans and South East Asians (n=63). Such broad groups were employed to control for any feature not directly related to climate (e.g. facial prognathism). Shape differences were quantified from landmark coordinate data collected via a Microscribe digitizer. After Procrustean superimpositioning, relative distances were compared via Student's t‐tests. The results showed that found that cold climate populations may be distinguished by significantly (p<0.0001) smaller choanal plane angles (more vertically oriented choanae), smaller maximum relative nasopharyngeal depth (staphylion‐sphenobasion chord), and higher relative medial pterygoid plate height. However, none of these features distinguished any single cold climate population from all other tropical populations. Climate likely influences choanal and overall nasopharyngeal morphology in a global context that is discernable only in large‐scale comparison of pooled populations. Grant Funding Source : National Science Foundation