Identificando señales de evolución no estocástica en la morfología craneofacial de poblaciones humanas modernas

Abstract

Human populations vary significantly in cranial morphology. It is still a matter of debate whether this variability has been accumulated through neutral processes (e.g. genetic drift) or through natural selection. Understanding the evolutionary processes that gave rise to this variation, is one of the goals of modern human biology. To examine the relationship between patterns of morphological change and observed versus expected variation under a neutral evolution scenario, we applied a quantitative genetic model on a large sample of populations covering the Americas, Asia and Oceania. Craniofacial morphology was studied from linear measurements corresponding to the Cranial Functional method, where thirty metric variables describe distinct functional components of the skull. Results indicated that random processes such as drift alone were not enough to explain the morphological variation of the modern human skull.