Neandertal Pelvic Remains from Krapina: Peculiar or Primitive?

Although fragmentary, the rich collection of fossil pelvic remains from the Neandertal site of Krapina in Croatia shows much of the morphology long considered to be characteristic of Neandertals from elsewhere in Europe and the Levant. This includes a long superior pubic ramus that is vertically thin in cross-section and an anteriorly positioned iliac pillar. The condition of the fossil material precludes evaluation of a further Neandertal characteristic, namely a broad pelvis. Comparison of the Krapina and other Neandertal fossils with earlier material from Europe, Asia and Africa demonstrates that the long pubis and broad pelvis are primitive for hominids and probably not part of a single adaptive or functional morphological complex with the vertically thin ramus or the anteriorly positioned iliac pillar. Rather than considering Neandertals to be »peculiar« or derived in their elongated pubic morphology, we see that Neandertals exhibit the long-standing primitive condition for hominids. It is modern human males who deviate from this longstanding pattern in their short pubis and it is this unusual, derived condition that requires explanation. D of the place of Neandertals in human evolution has usually focused on cranial and dental morphology, but several aspects of the postcranial skeleton have also figured prominently in the debate. One that has been central to discussions about Neandertal phylogeny and behavior from the very beginning of our knowledge of Neandertal morphology (at a time when much of that knowledge came from the Croatian Krapina remains) is the form of the pelvis, specifically in the region of the superior pubic ramus. Neandertal pelvic morphology is represented at Krapina by fifteen separate fossil specimens, inventoried and illustrated in Smith (1) and Radov~i}, Smith, Trinkaus and Wolpoff (2) and listed here in Table 1. This sample constitutes the richest collection of pelvic remains of Neandertals (or any other non-modern hominid) from a single site and is also significant given its chronological status early in the Neandertal sequence. Many of the pelvic fossils from Krapina are quite fragmentary but several (Krapina 207, 208/210, 209/212 and 255.1) possess sufficiently preserved morphology that they have been central to discussions of Neandertal pelvic anatomy over the last fifty years. Gorjanovi}-Kramberger (3) observed that the Krapina specimens showed evidence of a wide obturator foramen, morphology that was later noted in the Tabun Neandertal by McCown and Keith (4) who described that KAREN R. ROSENBERG Department of Anthropology University of Delaware Newark, Delaware 19716 United States of America E-mail: [email protected]