FESAおよびEDMAによる現代日本人寛骨の形態差の三次元的解析

抄録

Finite Element Scaling Analysis (FESA) and Euclidean Distance Matrix Analysis (EDMA) are two methods widely used in three dimensional morphometry of landmark coordinate data. The purpose of this study is to examine sexual dimorphism of adult human hip bones by applying these two techniques. Landmark data of adult hip bones of modern Japanese osteological specimens (19 male, 16 female) were Analyzed. In this paper, the author dicussed the analytical characteristics of each of the two techniques, and examine how sexual dimorphism was expressed when one considered the morphological differences of hip bones as represented by a large set of 33 landmarks.
The result of these analyses demonstrated that sexual dimorphism is expressed not only in those features traditionally pointed out, such as the relative location of the auricular surface, the width of the superior pubic ramus, the width of the pubic body, the depth of the acetabulum, but also in the curvature of the arcuate line near the auricular surface, which was more remarkable in the male hip bones. Moreover, results showed that regions which were significantly larger in females were highly limited (approximately 5% of landmark or distances), while regions which were significantly larger in males were over 45% of distances in EDMA and over 70% of landmarks in FESA. This indicates that sexual dimorphism in modern human hip bones, aside from difference of general size associated with body size, tends to be highly concentrated near the birth canal.