Laura Tabitha Buck

• PhD
• Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University

Objectives Genomics research has uncovered recurrent hybridization between hominin species, yet its morphological impact remains understudied. Non‐human primate research has suggested a morphological signature of hybrid ancestry, which could be used to identify hybrids in the hominin fossil record. This pattern may include extreme size, heightened...

Objectives The unfused human pubic symphysis has been interpreted as an obstetric adaptation to facilitate the passage of a large‐brained baby through a relatively small, bipedally adapted pelvis. The degree of fusion of the adult pubic symphysis was evaluated across primate species to gauge whether an open symphysis can be interpreted as an obstet...

Understanding the factors shaping human crania has long been a goal of biological anthropology, and climate, diet, and population history are three of the most well-established influences. The effects of these factors are, however, rarely compared within a single, variable population, limiting interpretations of their relative contribution to crani...

Perforated shells are often used to study socially mediated behaviour in past hunter-gatherer groups. One of the key issues regarding empty shells from beaches or fossil outcrops is determining human agency in the accumulation and modification of an assemblage. Here we investigate anthropogenic mediation in Initial Upper Palaeolithic and Early Ahma...

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...

The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, culture change and collapse in prehistory, 2013–18) led by Caroline Malone has focused on the unique Temple Culture of Neolithic Malta and its antecedents. This third volume builds on the achievements of Mortuary customs in prehistoric Malta, publ...

The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, culture change and collapse in prehistory, 2013–18) led by Caroline Malone has focused on the unique Temple Culture of Neolithic Malta and its antecedents. This third volume builds on the achievements of Mortuary customs in prehistoric Malta, publ...

The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, culture change and collapse in prehistory, 2013–18) led by Caroline Malone has focused on the unique Temple Culture of Neolithic Malta and its antecedents. This third volume builds on the achievements of Mortuary customs in prehistoric Malta, publ...

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....

Contributors explore common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture resulting from convergent evolution. During the past 12,000 years, agriculture originated in humans as many as twenty-three times, and during the past 65 million years, agriculture also originated in nonhuman animals at least twenty times and in...

Objectives Palaeopathological analysis is key for characterising population health at the individual level and across large assemblages but is rarely exploited to unite the remains of disarticulated individuals. This study explores the potential for individual identification through differential diagnosis of periosteal lesions in a commingled depos...

Ancient DNA analyses have shown that interbreeding between hominin taxa occurred multiple times. Although admixture is often reflected in skeletal phenotype, the relationship between the two remains poorly understood, hampering interpretation of the hominin fossil record. Direct study of this relationship is often impossible due to the paucity of h...

Questions surrounding the timing, extent, and evolutionary consequences of archaic admixture into human populations have a long history in evolutionary anthropology. More recently, advances in human genetics, particularly in the field of ancient DNA, have shed new light on the question of whether or not Homo sapiens interbred with other hominin gro...

To understand human evolution it is critical to clarify which adaptations enabled our colonisation of novel ecological niches. For any species climate is a fundamental source of environmental stress during range expansion. Mammalian climatic adaptations include changes in size and shape reflected in skeletal dimensions and humans fit general primat...

Maternal malnutrition during gestation and lactation is known to have adverse effects on offspring. We evaluate the impact of maternal diet on offspring bony labyrinth morphology. The bony labyrinth develops early and is thought to be stable to protect vital sensory organs within. For these reasons, bony labyrinth morphology has been used extensive...

The taxonomy and phylogeny of Homo heidelbergensis is much debated (for a review see Stringer 2012), so much so that this period in human evolution has been dubbed the “muddle in the Middle [Pleistocene].” There is little agreement on which specimens should be included in H. heidelbergensis (that is to say, the group of specimens which constitute w...

Haeusler et al. (1) suggest that our analysis (2) of the distribution of relative bone volume across the articular surface (figure 5) does not justify different taxonomic allocations or locomotor classifications. We agree with their first suggestion, and we did not use these data to make direct arguments for the taxonomic attribution of either spec...

Africa hosts the greatest human genetic diversity globally, but legacies of ancient population interactions and dispersals across the continent remain understudied. Here, we report genome-wide data from 20 ancient sub-Saharan African individuals, including the first reported ancient DNA from the DRC, Uganda, and Botswana. These data demonstrate the...

Bipedalism is a defining trait of the hominin lineage, associated with a transition from a more arboreal to a more terrestrial environment. While there is debate about when modern human-like bipedalism first appeared in hominins, all known South African hominins show morphological adaptations to bipedalism, suggesting that this was their predominan...

To understand human evolution it is critical to clarify which adaptations enabled our colonisation of novel ecological niches. For any species climate is a fundamental source of environmental stress during range expansion. Mammalian climatic adaptations include changes in size and shape reflected in skeletal dimensions and humans fit general primat...

Our current knowledge of the emergence of anatomically modern humans, and the human lineage in general, is limited, in large part because of the lack of a well preserved and well dated fossil record from Pleistocene Africa. Thus, the primary aim of our research is to partly relieve this problem by virtually reconstructing and analyzing the hominin...

There is considerable variation in mid-late Pleistocene hominin paranasal sinuses, and in some taxa distinctive craniofacial shape has been linked to sinus size. Extreme frontal sinus size has been reported in mid-Pleistocene specimens often classified as Homo heidelbergensis, and Neanderthal sinuses are said to be distinctively large, explaining d...

Perforated shells are often used to study socially mediated behavior in past hunter-gatherer groups. The assumption is that their exclusive symbolic function makes them ideally suited to investigate social networks, dispersal activity, and social interaction. Before making any statements regarding human behavior, however, it needs to be established...

Studies of femoral trabecular structure have shown that the orientation and volume of bone are associated with variation in loading and could be informative about individual joint positioning during locomotion. In this study, we analyse for the first time trabecular bone patterns throughout the femoral head using a whole‐epiphysis approach to inves...

Taphonomic modifications to Neolithic human skeletal remains from six rock-cut tombs in Malta has provided key information about funerary practices and the local environment. Application of microscopic analysis, computed tomography (CT) scanning, and 3D imaging of the modifications has allowed their comparison with similar examples in modern and ar...

There is evidence for early Pleistocene Homo in northern Europe, a novel hominin habitat. Adaptations enabling this colonisation are intriguing given suggestions that Homo exhibits physiological and behavioural malleability associated with a 'colonising niche'. Differences in body size/shape between conspecifics from different climates are well-kno...

Understanding the timing and character of the expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa is critical for inferring the colonization and admixture processes that underpin global population history. It has been argued that dispersal out of Africa had an early phase, particularly ~130–90 thousand years ago (ka), that reached only the East Mediterranean L...

Understanding the timing and character of the expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa is critical for inferring the colonization and admixture processes that underpin global population history. It has been argued that dispersal out of Africa had an early phase, particularly ~130–90 thousand years ago (ka), that reached only the East Mediterranean L...

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...

Various diagnoses of the genus Homo have been proposed, including behavioral traits such as tool-making, carnivory, and hunting. However, tool-making and carnivory almost certainly began more than 2.6 million years ago, in prehuman phases of our evolution, while reliably distinguishing hunting from scavenging in the early archeological record is pr...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160328.].

In 1912, palaeontologist Arthur Smith Woodward and amateur antiquarian and solicitor Charles Dawson announced the discovery of a fossil that supposedly provided a link between apes and humans: Eoanthropus dawsoni (Dawson’s dawnman). The publication generated huge interest from scientists and the general public. However, ‘Piltdown man’s’ initial cel...

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...

The primacy of fossils in the Natural History Museum (NHM) goes back to the very origins of the Museum, but the first fossil hominins in the collections were probably the Upper Palaeolithic remains from Bruniquel, which were accessioned in 1864. This founded a collection which has continued to expand into this century. While there have been many co...

This paper presents evidence of the discovery of a new Middle Pleistocene site in central southern England, with undisturbed evidence of hominin occupation well-dated to an interstadial towards the end of Marine Isotope Stage 8, c. 250,000 BP. The site consists of a preserved remnant of a river terrace and its alluvial floodplain overlain by chalk-...

Background: Diagnosing Homo sapiens is a critical question in the study of human evolution. Although what constitutes living members of our own species is straightforward, in the fossil record this is still a matter of much debate. The issue is complicated by questions of species diagnoses and ideas about the mode by which a new species is born, b...

The amount of phenotypic variation between conspecifics is largely a result of the opposing forces of constraint and plasticity. Because selection is the product of competition between individuals of the same species, understanding the interactions between these forces is vital to understanding evolution. We investigated levels of intraspecific var...