Virtual Anthropology

Abstract

Comparative morphology, dealing with the diversity of form and shape, and functional morphology, the study of the relationship between the structure and the function of an organism's parts, are both important subdisciplines in biological research. Virtual anthropology (VA) contributes to comparative morphology by taking advantage of technological innovations, and it also offers new opportunities for functional analyses. It exploits digital technologies and pools experts from different domains such as anthropology, primatology, medicine, paleontology, mathematics, statistics, computer science, and engineering. VA as a technical term was coined in the late 1990s from the perspective of anthropologists with the intent of being mostly applied to biological questions concerning recent and fossil hominoids. More generally, however, there are advanced methods to study shape and size or to manipulate data digitally suitable for application to all kinds of primates, mammals, other vertebrates, and invertebrates or to issues regarding plants, tools, or other objects. In this sense, we could also call the field "virtual morphology." The approach yields permanently available virtual copies of specimens and data that comprehensively quantify geometry, including previously neglected anatomical regions. It applies advanced statistical methods, supports the reconstruction of specimens based on reproducible manipulations, and promotes the acquisition of larger samples by data sharing via electronic archives. Finally, it can help identify new, hidden traits, which is particularly important in paleoanthropology, where the scarcity of material demands extracting information from fragmentary remains. This contribution presents a current view of the six main work steps of VA: digitize, expose, compare, reconstruct, materialize, and share. The VA machinery has also been successfully used in biomechanical studies which simulate the stress and strains appearing in structures. Although methodological issues remain to be solved before results from the two domains can be fully integrated, the various overlaps and cross-fertilizations suggest the widespread appearance of a "virtual functional morphology" in the near future. Yrbk Phys Anthropol 156:22-42,

Form, Function, and Geometric Morphometrics

“…Bookstein (1991) originally defined three types of landmarks: Type 15 discrete juxtapositions of tissues (i.e., the intersection of two sutures); Type 25 maxima of curvature (i.e., the deepest point in a depression, or the most projecting point on a process); and Type 35 extremal points or points that are defined by virtue of information at other locations on that object (i.e., the endpoint or centroid of a curve or feature). This definition of Type 3 landmarks originally encompassed semilandmarks, but Weber and Bookstein (2011) more recently redefined this system to identify Type 3 landmarks as those landmarks characterized by information from multiple curves and symmetry (i.e., intersection of two curves, or the intersection of a curve and a suture) and identified three subtypes (3a, 3b, 3c).…”

“…Originally identified as a special form of Type 3 landmark (Bookstein, 1991), a semilandmark refers to any point on a geometric feature defined in terms of its position on that feature (i.e., 10 equally spaced semilandmarks along the length of a curve). Weber and Bookstein (2011) have further identified three types of semilandmarks: Type 45 semilandmarks on curves; Type 55 semilandmarks on surfaces; Type 65 constructed semilandmarks (i.e., the start and finish of a curve).…”

Evaluating osteological ageing from digital data

“…CT has also been recognised as an efficient tool for non-destructive study of archaeological samples, such as mummies and bog bodies (R€ uhli et al 2004;Adams & Alsop, 2008;Lynnerup, 2008), skeletons (Kn€ usel et al 2013), and even for cremated remains (Minozzi et al 2010;Harvig et al 2012). In addition, 3D models created using such technologies facilitate morphometric analysis, allowing an objective evaluation of 3D morphological variations of the bones in modern humans, their ancestors, and their closest relatives (Zollikofer & Ponce de Leon, 2005;Weber & Bookstein, 2011;Weber, 2015).…”

Surfin’ endocasts: The good and the bad on brain form

“…All anatomical fields have been particularly enhanced by such methods and tools, although paleontology (and particularly paleoanthropology) was especially rewarded by the advent of these informatic techniques (Zollikofer and Ponce de León, 2005;Gunz et al, 2009;Weber, 2015). Shape analysis was a major component of such epistemological change, mostly when considering landmark-based approaches, coordinates, superimposition methods, and multivariate statistics (Bookstein, 1991;Rohlf and Marcus, 1993;Adams et al, 2004;Slice, 2007;Mitteroecker and Gunz, 2009).…”