中国更新世晚期古人类肢骨形态功能分析

对中国更新世晚期古人类肢骨化石的研究，能够为推断中国地区人类起源与迁徙过程中生存适应性活动提供重要证据。我们前期研究了田园洞古人类股骨形态功能，发现①不同生活方式的古代居民群体之间肢骨形态特征存在显著差异，②肢骨研究可以为更新世晚期古人类的行为活动和生活方式提供关键线索。而单个遗址的研究并不能全面概括中国早期现代人的整体状况，大部分对比标本也仅限于表面形态分析，因而，仍需对中国整体早期现代人肢骨形态变异范围以及地域性差异进行系统性研究。本项目将尽可能选取目前国内已发现的所有更新世晚期古人类肢骨化石，采用高分辨率CT扫描获取相应标本的三维数据，对肢骨化石内外结构进行全方位定量分析。最终，确定中国早期现代人肢骨形态变异范围，并推断相关古人类的行为活动、病理状况和生活状态等信息。本项目的完成将弥补中国古人类肢骨化石研究的不足，并进一步完善中国早期现代人起源与进化的研究。

The study of ancient human limb bones in late Pleistocene can provide important evidence to infer the adaptation activities in the process of human origin and migration. We studied the functional morphology of Tianyuan femora and found that there was a significant difference in bone morphology between populations of different lifestyles and the femoral study could provide clues to the behavior and lifestyle of the ancient human in late Pleistocene. However, one single site could not comprehensively summarize the overall situation of Chinese early modern human, and most of the comparison specimens are limited to surface morphology analysis. Therefore, it is still necessary to systematically study the variation range and regional differences of early modern human limbs in China. Our project intends to select the limb bone fossils found in the late Pleistocene hominid sites of China as the research materials. We use the 3D models to analyze them. The models are obtained by high-resolution micro-computed tomography (microCT) with processing. After optimization, the external and internal structures of limb bones are analyzed employing comprehensive quantitative analysis. The present study will determine the variation range of limb bone morphology in Chinese early modern human and infer the behavior, pathology and living conditions of related ancient human beings. The completion of this project will make up the deficiency on the limb bone fossils of Chinese ancient human, and further improve the study of the origin and evolution of Chinese early modern human.