Antoine Balzeau

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle · Homme et Environnement

The anatomical asymmetries of the human brain are the subject of a great deal of scientific interest because of their links with handedness and lateralized cognitive functions. Information about lateralization in humans is also available from the post-cranial skeleton, particularly the arm bones, in which differences in size and shape are related t...

The frontal sinuses are cavities inside the frontal bone located at the junction between the face and the cranial vault and close to the brain. Despite a long history of study, understanding of their origin and variation through evolution is limited. This work compares most hominin species’ holotypes and other key individuals with extant hominids....

The origin of funerary practices has important implications for the emergence of so-called modern cognitive capacities and behaviour. We provide new multidisciplinary information on the archaeological context of the La Ferrassie 8 Neandertal skeleton (grand abri of La Ferrassie, Dordogne, France), including geochronological data -¹⁴C and OSL-, ZooM...

The cranial anatomy of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens is well documented in the paleoanthropological and medical literature. However, there are few high-quality visual guides of their comparative morphology. We give here a detailed description of the anatomy of two important fossil specimens, La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 and abri Pataud 1, base...

The left and right hemispheres of our brains differ subtly in structure, and each is dominant in processing specific cognitive tasks. Our species has a unique system of distributing behavior and cognition between each cerebral hemisphere, with a preponderance of pronounced side biases and lateralized functions. This hemisphere-dependent relationshi...

Le Pléistocène moyen voit l’émergence de nouvelles espèces et populations d’hominines : Homo sapiens en Afrique et les néandertaliens et les dénisoviens en Eurasie, dont l’ancêtre commun le plus récent aurait vécu en Afrique il y a environ 600 ka. Les hominines de cette période présentent une importante variabilité morphologique qui rend difficile...

L’étude du cerveau des humains préhistoriques est complexe étant donné que le cerveau ne se fossilise pas. Néanmoins, le cerveau laisse des empreintes superficielles sur la surface interne du crâne, appelée endocrâne. La relation de proximité entre le cerveau et l’endocrâne fait de ce dernier un modèle pour inférer la forme et la structure du cerve...

This chapter provides the first descriptions of the intact paranasal sinuses of the Hofmeyr cranium, which include both frontal sinusesFrontal- sinus and the right maxillary sinusMaxillary sinus, and compares these structures across Recent and fossil Homo sapiens. In comparison to Recent human samples, the Hofmeyr cranium presents with absolutely a...

Gigantism and acromegaly have been observed in past populations; however, analyses usually focus on the morphological features of the post-cranial skeleton. The aim of this study is to characterize the internal anatomical features of the skull (brain endocast anatomy and asymmetry, frontal pneumatization, cranial thickness, sella turcica size) of a...

Variations in the cross-sectional properties of long bones are used to reconstruct the activity of human groups and differences in their respective habitual behaviors. Knowledge of what factors influence bone structure in Homo sapiens and Neandertals is still insufficient thus, this study investigated which biological and environmental variables in...

Brain mapping studies often need to identify brain structures or functional circuits into a set of individual brains. To this end, multiple atlases have been published to represent such structures based on different modalities, subject sets, and techniques. The mainstream approach to exploit these atlases consists in spatially deforming each indivi...

We are interested here in the central organ of our thoughts: the brain. Advances in neuroscience have made it possible to obtain increasing information on the anatomy of this organ, at ever-higher resolutions, with different imaging techniques, on ever-larger samples. At the same time, paleoanthropology has to deal with partial reflections on the s...

The origin of language has been much debated over the years. Recent research has centred the controversies on two main ideas. Language, as defined by the Basic Property formulated by Chomsky, is a characteristic unique to Homo sapiens that developed in our species in the past 300,000 years. Other scientists argue that the Basic Property is a derive...

Although Neandertals are the best-known fossil hominins, the tempo and evolutionary processes in their lineage are strongly debated. This is in part due to the scarcity of the fossil record, in particular before the marine isotopic stage (MIS) 5. In 2010, a partial hominin mandible was discovered at the Middle Paleolithic site of Payre (France) in...

The La Ferrassie 1 (LF1), skeleton discovered over a century ago, is one of the most important Neandertal individuals in both paleobiological and historical terms. It is indeed among the most complete specimens ever found, and it has played an important role in the interpretation of Neandertal anatomy and lifeways. LF1 was found in 1909 and has bee...

Studying endocasts has long allowed anthropologists to examine changes in the external topography and the overall size of the brain throughout the evolutionary history of hominins. The nearly complete calvaria of Manot 1 presents an opportunity to gain insights into the external brain morphology, vascular system, and dimensions of the brain of this...

Studying endocasts has long allowed anthropologists to examine changes in the external topography and the overall size of the brain throughout the evolutionary history of hominins. The nearly complete calvaria of Manot 1 presents an opportunity to gain insights into the external brain morphology, vascular system, and dimensions of the brain of this...

This study is an extension of that which was undertaken by Balzeau et al. and published in this journal (2017), to re-examine the BH1 cranium which was initially described as Homo rhodesiensis in 1921, but more recently regarded as H. heidelbergensis. It is compared to other Pleistocene specimens of Homo. Balzeau et al. (2017) examined various cran...

Objectives: We provide the description and comparative analysis of all the human fossil remains found at Axlor during the excavations carried out by J. M. de Barandiarán from 1967 to 1974: a cranial vault fragment and eight teeth, five of which likely belonged to the same individual, although two are currently lost. Our goal is to describe in deta...

Paleoanthropology’s traditional working methods, Antoine Balzeau argues, are no longer effective—especially when modern technology offers researchers more efficient means of analysis and archiving.

Les méthodes de travail de la paléoanthropologie ne sont plus efficaces, selon Antoine Balzeau—surtout lorsque la technologie moderne offre aux chercheurs des moyens plus efficaces d’analyser et d’archiver.

Objectives We provide the description and comparative analysis of six new teeth from the site of La Ferrassie. Our goal is to discuss their taxonomic attribution, and to provide an updated inventory of Neandertal and modern human remains from La Ferrassie in their associated archeological context. Materials and methods We use external and internal...

Although recently the internal structure of the non-supranuchal fossa of Homo sapiens has been described and compared to that observed in the Neandertal suprainiac fossa, until now it has not been examined in any modern human children. In this study, the internal structure of this fossa in the occipital bones of three children (two aged 3‒4 years a...

The cranium of specimen R82. View of the cranium in norma lateralis (a); in norma basalis (b); mandible with preserved teeth (c). (TIF)

The cranium of specimen R82. Abnormal porosity visible on the greater wing of the sphenoid bone (a), on the medial surface of the coronoid process of the mandible (b), both probably related to the presence of scurvy; cribra orbitalia visible in the orbital vault (c and d). (TIF)

The preserved parts of the cranium of specimen R23. View of the cranium in: norma lateralis (a); norma verticalis (b). (TIF)

The preserved parts of the cranium of specimen R24. The view of the two parietal bones and the occipital bone. (TIF)

The discovery of the human fossils at Cro-Magnon (Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, Dordogne, France) completely overturned the then nascent scientific disciplines of Biological Anthropology and Prehistory. This article presents aspects of this upheaval and the importance for the current scientific community of the Cro-Magnon human remains 150 years aft...

The endocranium shows the influence of the shape and development of brain tissues and overall brain modifications. During the late Upper Pleistocene and Holocene smaller brains appeared and the higher position of endinion relative to inion might indicate changes in cerebellar and occipital lobes. In previous studies, the depths of the cerebral and...

Objectives: Bilateral asymmetry of diaphyseal shape and size may be a reflection of relative activity levels and patterns of habitual biomechanical stress in the upper arms of Neandertals and Homo sapiens. The main purpose of our study was to assess the level of directional asymmetry of humeral cross sections in Neandertals, recent Australian abori...

The La Ferrassie 1 (LF1) skeleton, discovered over a century ago, is one of the most important Neandertal individuals both for its completeness and due to the role it has played historically in the interpretation of Neandertal anatomy and lifeways. Here we present new skeletal remains from this individual, which include a complete right middle ear...

Of the characteristics of the species Homo sapiens relative to other living animals, the use of articulated language is among the most striking. Because it implies—and allows for—complex social relationships and cognitive processes, the emergence of articulated language during hominin evolution is regarded as one of the most important steps in beco...

The cranium (Broken Hill 1 or BH1) from the site previously known as Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia) is one of the best preserved hominin fossils from the mid-Pleistocene. Its distinctive combination of anatomical features, however, makes its taxonomic attribution ambiguous. High resolution microCT, which has not previously been...

The cranium (Broken Hill 1 or BH1) from the site previously known as Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia) is one of the best preserved hominin fossils from the mid-Pleistocene. Its distinctive combination of anatomical features, however, makes its taxonomic attribution ambiguous. High resolution microCT, which has not previously been...

Antoine Balzeau critically reviews a recent paper by Hugo Reyes-Centeno, Katerina Harvati, and Gerhard Jäger, “Tracking Modern Human Population History from Linguistic and Cranial Phenotype” that argues for a link between the development of human language and the evolving shape of the human skull.

Une étude récente prétend qu’il existe un lien entre le développement de langage humain et l’évolution de la forme du crâne humain. Antoine Balzeau la critique.

The skull of René Descartes is held in the National Museum of Natural History since the 19th c. Up to date, only anthropological examinations were carried out, focusing on the cranial capacity and phrenological interpretation of the skull morphology. Using CT-scan based 3D technology, a reconstruction of the endocast was performed, allowing for its...

The site of La Ferrassie (Dordogne, France) is well known for the presence of several (N=7) Neandertal individuals, and here we focus on two adults (LF1 and LF2) discovered by Peyrony and Capitan in the early 20thc [1], and LF8, a child excavated by Delporte in the 1970s [2]. In spite when the LF1 and LF2 discoveries were made, we know that they we...

The first evidence of the partial infant Neandertal skeleton La Ferrassie 8 (LF 8) (Grand Abri of La Ferrassie, Dordogne, France) was discovered in 1970, although most of the remains were found in 1973 as part of the 1968–1973 work at the site by H. Delporte. This individual and the other Neandertal children from La Ferrassie were published in the...

Cranial anatomical features play a prominent part in the definition of extinct Homo taxa and in species identification in fossils. Thus, knowledge of cranial morphology considered within its geochronological framework is essential to the understanding of the evolution, chronology, and dispersal of the genus Homo. The brain is also a valuable object...

Indonesia, and particularly Java island, has been the place of the longest occupation by Homo erectus' species. Since the first Homo erectus found by Eugene Dubois in 1891 in the Trinil site, the discoveries of human remains have been regular, allowing the gathering of the most important concentration of Homo erectus in the world spanning more than...

Researchers are increasingly using computer software and morphometrics to assist with reconstruction of fossil hominin material although the majority of reconstructions focus on a single bone. The Spy II skeleton was found in Belgium in 1886 and is relatively complete(1). The aim of this study was to virtually recreate the Spy II Neandertal using m...

The cranium from Broken Hill (BH1; Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia, now Kabwe, Zambia) is a key specimen in the study of human evolution. It is one of the best preserved fossils from the mid-Pleistocene and some of its unusual anatomical features make its taxonomic attribution particularly debated. We give a precise description of the internal anato...

Knowledge on variations in temporal bone pneumatization in fossil hominins is still limited, although this feature could have implications for phylogenetic discussions and more generally for a better understanding of the development of temporal bone anatomy, including specific particularities. Here, we document the pattern of distribution of tempor...

The first evidence of the partial infant Neandertal skeleton La Ferrassie 8 (LF8) was discovered in 1970, although most of the remains were found in 1973 as part of the 1968-1973 work at the site by H. Delporte. This individual and the other Neandertal children from La Ferrassie were published in the early 1980s by J.-L. Heim, and since then LF8 ha...

Os et dents résistent au passage du temps et à la décomposition du corps. Ils deviennent alors des fossiles, témoins précieux de la vie du passé, des archives biologiques et environnementales, archives culturelles lorsqu’ils sont retrouvés dans un contexte archéologique... Ils sont porteurs d’autant de « messages » qui peuvent être décryptés par de...

En raison de la forte composante génétique et de leur bonne conservation, les dents revêtent un intérêt tout particulier en paléoanthropologie. L’utilisation des techniques récentes d’imagerie (μCT-scan) a permis de mettre en évidence une relative proximité morphologique entre la surface externe de l’émail (SEE) et la jonction émail dentine (JED),...