News and ViewsEarly modern human cranial remains from the Peştera cu Oase, Romania
Section snippets
The Oase human cranial remains
The initial piece discovered is an anterior cranial skeleton (Fig. 1), which was found face down in a small alcove. This facial piece was accompanied on the surface by a largely complete left temporal bone (Fig. 4) and a number of frontal, parietal and occipital bone segments, as well as remains of U. spelaeus. Only surface pieces likely to be human, as well as some adjacent bear bones, were plotted in and collected, with further recovery of skeletal elements on hold until appropriate
The Oase 2 cranium
The Oase 2 cranium (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3) is that of a mid second decade adolescent; the M3s appear to have complete crown formation but have just reached alveolar eruption, and the sphenooccipital synchondrosis is completely patent. Oase 2 is well preserved in those regions which are usually fragmentary in fossil human crania. These areas include the anterior maxillae and adjacent zygomatic bones, the internal orbital surfaces, the internal nasal, posterior choanal and ethmoid region, and
Oase 3 temporal bone
The Oase 3 left temporal bone (Fig. 4) is largely complete, having lost its anterosuperior squamosal sutural edge and sustained some damage to the lateral superior petrous above the mastoid air cells. It appears to be fully mature, and found alone it would be considered so. However, except for male mastoid growth, there are few changes in the temporal bone after the mid second decade, making assessments of adolescent versus mature status ambiguous. It is treated here as adult.
The height of the
Summary
The recently discovered human cranial remains from the Peştera cu Oase emphasize a pattern already known from the probably contemporaneous Oase 1 mandible. The remains are essentially “modern” in the cladistic sense of the term, since the three main pieces, the facial skeleton and bi-parietal section of Oase 2 and the temporal bone of Oase 3, exhibit a suite of derived “modern human” features. Yet, these diagnostic features are associated with several archaic aspects of the cranium and
Acknowledgements
The fieldwork at the Peştera cu Oase is undertaken through the auspices of the Institutul de Speologie “Emil Racoviǎ,” Cluj and the support of our respective institutions. R.G. Franciscus and F. Spoor provided helpful comments.
References (5)
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