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The value of quantitative infracranial nonmetric variation is examined in the study of population relationships by using samples from populations originating from five major geographic regions: Australia (two populations), Africa, East Asia, Europe, and Polynesia. According to the nonspecificity hypothesis, there are no distinct large classes of genes affecting one group of attributes exclusively; thus infracranial nonmetric traits should compare with other osteologic data sets in addressing questions of population relationships. By using the mean measure of divergence, infracranial nonmetric traits are shown to be useful in separating populations, particularly when using female and pooled-sex samples. The two Australian female samples (New South Wales coastal Australian and South Australian Aboriginals) are shown to be closer than any other two samples. The picture of intrapopulation and interpopulation variation in infracranial nonmetric traits is extended and clarified. Distance studies with infracranial nonmetric traits are possible but more illuminating if the sexes are first separated. Infracranial nonmetric variation does extend the knowledge of human population studies in yielding biologically meaningful results relating to development and ontogeny.

An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth century AD.

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The task of identifying fragments of long bone shafts as human or non-human is difficult but necessary, for both forensic and archaeological cases, and a fast simple method is particularly useful. Previous literature suggests there may be differences in the thickness of the cortical bone between these two groups, but this has not been tested thoroughly. The aim of this study was not only to test this suggestion, but also to provide data that could be of practical assistance for future comparisons. The major limb bones (humerus, radius, femur and tibia) of 50 Caucasoid adult skeletons of known age and sex were radiographed, along with corresponding skeletal elements from sheep, pigs, cattle, large dogs and kangaroos. Measurements were taken from the radiographs at five points along the bone shaft, of shaft diameter, cortical bone thickness, and a cortical thickness index (sum of cortices divided by shaft diameter) in both anteroposterior and mediolateral orientations. Each variable for actual cortical bone thickness as well as cortical thickness indices were compared between the human group (split by sex) and each of the non-human groups in turn, using Student's t-tests. Results showed that while significant differences did exist between the human groups and many of the non-human groups, these were not all in the same direction. That is, some variables in the human groups were significantly greater than, and others were significantly less than, the corresponding variable in the non-human groups, depending on the particular non-human group, sex of the human group, or variable under comparison. This was the case for measurements of both actual cortical bone thickness and cortical thickness index. Therefore, for bone shaft fragments for which the skeletal element is unknown, the overlap in cortical bone thickness between different areas of different bones is too great to allow identification using this method alone. However, by providing extensive cortical bone thickness data for a range of bones, this study may be able to assist in the identification of some bone fragments by providing another piece of evidence that, used in conjunction with other clues, can provide a likely determination of the origin of a bone fragment.

Studies have reported the incidence of anatomical variants of the paranasal sinuses for specific populations with a view to helping surgeons avoid possible complications during functional endoscopic sinus surgery. Some have found significant variation when comparing different populations. The current study has used computed tomography (CT) scans to observe variations in the paranasal sinuses in a non-random sample of museum skulls of Melanesians, a racial group that has not previously been studied in this respect. The incidence of variants found were: agger nasi cells 59.5%, concha bullosa 41.5%/o, Haller's air cells 31.7%, internal carotid artery bulge in the sphenoid sinus 23.8%/, supraorbital cells 16. 7%, paradoxical curvature of the mid-dle turbinate 7.5% and pneumatization of crista galli 7.1%.Because of contradictory findings in the literature as to the incidence of such variations between racial groups the authors are able to make only limited meaningful comparisons between their subjects and other such groups.