Ontogenia y filogenia del modelado óseo en el esqueleto facial y la mandíbula de los hominoideosestudio de la línea filogenética neandertal a partir de las muestras de Atapuerca-SH y el Sidrón

Resumo

In the present work I have studied the morphological changes ocurred in the cranium during the hominoid evolution by means of the analysis of the growth in the ontogeny. For this reason, the growth in the ontogeny is approached by the study of the bone growth mechanism, which consists of the cellular activity responsible of the bone formation and bone resorption. The identification of the microfeatures associated to this cellular activities in the bone surface allow to elaborate the bone modeling pattern (BMP). Thus, the facial skeleton of the following samples have been studied: Homo heidelbergensis Atapuerca-SH y Arago and H. neanderthalensis El Sidrón and Zaskalnaya and the ontogenetic series of the extant species H. sapiens, Pan troglodytes and Gorilla gorilla. The methodology consists in the elaboratión of high resolution replicas of the bone surface and its analysis with the reflected light microscope. The results show the BMP for each species which are interpretated in the craneofacial theoretical framework to obtain the facial growth vectors. These data allow to hipothesize the specific growth model showing a characteristic anteroinferior growth of the facial skeleton. The results also show the ontogenetic variations of the BMP which are described for the first time. The analysis of the BMP and the growh models show an intraspecific variability resulting for the changes ocurred in the craniofacial system: the brain volume ceases, the growth of the cranial base ceases and the the cranial sutures fused. The interspecific comparison between the BMP obtained in the present work and the BMP obtained in previous works shows the similarities among the hominoid species, except in H. sapiens, which presents a specific pattern. Finally, the bone formation velocity in the human mandible has been approach with the analysis of the bone microstructure allowing the elaboration of the relative velocity map.