Abstract

DE AZEVEDO, Soledad; PUCCIARELLI, Héctor M; LANATA, José L  and  GONZALEZ-JOSE, Rolando. Identificando señales de evolución no estocástica en la morfología craneofacial de poblaciones humanas modernas. Rev Arg Antrop Biol [online]. 2012, vol.14, n.1, pp.113-129. ISSN 1514-7991.

Human populations vary significantly in cranial morphology. It is still a matter of debate whether this variability has been accumulated through neutral processes (e.g. genetic drift) or natural selection. Understanding the evolutionary processes that gave rise to this variation is one of the goals of modern human biology. To examine the relationship between the patterns of morphological change and the observed versus the expected variation under a neutral evolution scenario, we applied a quantitative genetic model on a large sample of populations covering the Americas, Asia and Oceania. Craniofacial morphology was studied from linear measurements corresponding to the Functional Cranial method, where thirty metric variables describe the different functional components of the skull. Results indicated that random processes, such as drift alone, are not enough to explain the morphological variation of the modern human skull.

Keywords : Quantitative genetics; Morphologic variation; Functional cranial method.

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