Efficacy of diffeomorphic surface matching and 3D geometric morphometrics for taxonomic discrimination of Early Pleistocene hominin mandibular molars

Morphometric assessments of the dentition have played significant roles in hypotheses relating to taxonomic diversity among extinct hominins. In this regard, emphasis has been placed on the statistical appraisal of intraspecific variation to identify morphological criteria that convey maximum discriminatory power. Three-dimensional geometric morphometric (3D GM) approaches that utilize landmarks and semi-landmarks to quantify shape variation have enjoyed increasingly popular use over the past twenty-five years in assessments of the outer enamel surface (OES) and enamel–dentine junction (EDJ) of fossil molars. Recently developed diffeomorphic surface matching (DSM) methods that model the deformation between shapes have drastically reduced if not altogether eliminated potential methodological inconsistencies associated with the a priori identification of landmarks and delineation of semi-landmarks. As such, DSM has the potential to better capture the geometric details that describe tooth shape by accounting for both homologous and non-homologous (i.e., discrete) features, and permitting the statistical determination of geometric correspondence. We compare the discriminatory power of 3D GM and DSM in the evaluation of the OES and EDJ of mandibular permanent molars attributed to Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus and early Homo sp. from the sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans. For all three molars, classification and clustering scores demonstrate that DSM performs better at separating the A. africanus and P. robustus samples than does 3D GM. The EDJ provided the best results. P. robustus evinces greater morphological variability than A. africanus. The DSM assessment of the early Homo molar from Swartkrans reveals its distinctiveness from either australopith sample, and the “unknown” specimen from Sterkfontein (Stw 151) is notably more similar to Homo than to A. africanus.