Using the shape of the basicranial portion of the temporal bone to distinguish between relatively closely-related human populations

Variation in cranial morphology is routinely used in archaeology to identify population affinity in human skeletal remains. The shape of the external basicranial portion of the temporal bone, in particular, has been found to have one of the strongest phylogenetic signals in the crania, and so it can be effectively used to distinguish between populations on a large, often global scale. However, its applicability to the analysis of relatively...