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<p>There continues to be a lack of agreement concerning the precise phylogenetic placement of Proconsul despite the wealth of fossil material and the extensiveness of its study. The difficulty in resolving the phylogenetic status of this important and well represented Miocene catarrhine is a consequence of its apparent basal position relative to crown catarrhines. This position complicates the inference of character polarities. This dissertation tests three previously proposed hypotheses concerning the phylogenetic position of Proconsul: (1) Proconsul is a stem catarrhine; (2) Proconsul is a stem hominoid; and (3) Proconsul is a basal hominid, most closely related to extant great apes and humans. A phylogenetic analysis based on 719 characters drawn from the skull, forelimb, pelvis and foot, and sampling a diversity of extant anthropoid taxa, offers no compelling support for a hominoid clade that includes Proconsul. The radiation of crown catarrhines involved rapid evolutionary changes from the ancestral catarrhine morphotype, resulting in stem catarrhines appearing much more similar to each other, even where there are key synapomorphies linking them with crown clades. As a result, systematic analyses alone are insufficient to confidently support a single optimal phylogenetic hypothesis. Further exploration of the data, by combining inferred ancestral morphotypes with phenetic visualizations of character evolution, demonstrated that inclusion of Proconsul among Hominoidea or Hominidae pushed the ancestral catarrhine morphotype closer to these clades, respectively. Given a more comprehensive analysis of character evolution under each hypothesis, this dissertation supports the hypothesis that Proconsul is a stem catarrhine. In addition to helping clarify the long-running debate about the phylogenetic status of Proconsul, the results offer fresh insights into the early stages of hominoid evolution and demonstrate the importance of comprehensive phylogenetic analyses in helping to resolve the relationships of problematic stem taxa.

The identification of forensic cases often includes the use of skeletal elements to assess the age-at-death of an individual. The pubic symphysis is the preferred and most often used skeletal age indicator. Standard techniques, such as the Suchey-Brooks system, require that the morphology of the pubic symphysis is visually compared to shape characteristics typical for phases with associated age intervals. As individual factors accumulate during the aging process, estimating the age-at-death for older individuals becomes increasingly more difficult. In addition, methods based on visual inspection of the bones introduce some level of subjectivity and observer-related error. This research makes use of about 100 3D laser scans of the pubic symphysis of white male skeletons with known ages-at-death, and proposes several objective, quantitative methods for shape analysis that aim to provide a surface or outline measure of the shape of the scans that minimizes the age-estimation error. The proposed methods include the use of thin plate splines, two-dimensional Fourier, wavelet and elliptic Fourier analysis, and a technique that uses the radius of a best fitting circle (in 2D) or sphere (in 3D) as a measure of the curvature of a shape. In addition some refinement and partitioning techniques were implemented. The project investigates the relationship between the exact age-at-death and the different measures produced by each method. Also included are results of applying a recently proposed computational method, the SAH-Score, to new scan data and scan partitions. As a final result, the project proposes multivariate regression models that combine the measures with highest statistical significance to minimize the age estimation error (about 12 years) and maximize the adjusted R-squared value (over 55%). Furthermore, the results are subjected to two cross-validation analysis to test for the accuracy of the models when used in practice. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Scientific Computing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2015. / November 3, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references. / Dennis Slice, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Creswell, University Representative; Bridget Algee-Hewitt, Committee Member; Peter Beerli, Committee Member; Xiaoqiang Wang, Committee Member.

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Visual and metric analysis both provide accepted methods for sex determination in humans. Visual ascertainment uses differing morphological traits in males and females to establish sex. Researchers have continually sought accurate methods of sexing long bones when skulls or pelves are absent or fragmented. These long bone elements may not have sexually distinct characteristics, but tend to survive in the field quite well. Metric analysis depends on size dimorphism between males and females to correctly assign sex. Metric methods fail where the sexes overlap or when skeletal elements cannot be assigned to their correct biological population. Under these conditions, visual ascertainment is extremely useful. It relies on descriptive features, not size, to interpret the shape variations between male and female elements. For example, physiological soft tissue variations in the "carrying angle'" of the arm at the humero-radioulnar junction are known to be sexually dimorphic; therefore, the hard tissue features of the distal humerus also should be sexually dimorphic. I observed six distinct visual characteristics of the distal humerus to determine sex in a blind study conducted on 649 individuals sampled from diverse biological populations. In addition to visual assessment, I collected four humeral measurements to determine whether quantitative analysis would be a better indicator of sex than non-metric analysis. I used nonparametric statistical methods to examine· the significance of each morphological feature and its relationship to known sex. All characteristics showed a high association with sex, and the relationships between sex and each characteristic were statistically strong. The final predictive quality of this method was 84% regardless of population; I concluded that my visual method is a dependable sex predictor among diverse populations. Every biological group varied considerably in size dimensions, but exhibited common morphological features of the distal humerus. This confirms that visual techniques provide accurate results regardless of biological affiliation. In many cases, visual assessment was as accurate or more accurate than metric analysis. Therefore, the distal humerus and its unique physical features provide an alternative method to previously used quantitative techniques in the determination of sex.

Gibbon classification at the species and subspecies levels has been hotly debated for the last 200 years. This thesis explores the reasons for this debate. Authorities agree that siamang, concolor, kloss and hoolock are species, while there is complete lack of agreement on lar, agile, moloch, Mueller's and pileated. The disagreement results from the use and emphasis of different character traits, and from debate on the occurrence and importance of gene flow.

<p> Petra, an ancient city located in southern Jordan, is a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its architecturally grand buildings and tombs carved into sandstone bedrock. The establishment of Petra as the capital of the Nabataean kingdom heralded the beginning of the sedentarization of the rulers of the Nabataean people. Petra rose to prominence between the 2^nd century B.C. and 1^st century A.D. where up to 30,000 Nabataean people may have lived. Despite decades of archaeological excavations at Petra, little is known about how these inhabitants of such a large city could have supported themselves in a semi-arid environment. This study reconstructs the diet of the non-elite Nabataeans from the 1^st century A.D., whose remains were excavated from the Petra North Ridge Tombs. The residents of Petra, like many ancient cities, likely relied on the hinterland for food items and it is expected that the residents supplemented their diet by importing foods to support their large population and to provide variability to the peoples&rsquo; diet. Here, we use a multidisciplinary approach to reconstruct the diet of the non-elite Nabataeans. This approach includes an analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of human and faunal remains, combined with paleobotanical, archaeological, zooarchaeological and papyrological data. Stable isotope analysis revealed that the non-elite Nabataeans had relatively homogenous &delta;¹³C and &delta;¹⁵N bone collagen and apatite values which indicates that non-elite Petraeans may have ate a similar diet that relied on water-intensive C₃ plants such as barley and wheat along with meat and secondary products from animals. Evidence of local agriculture production from papyrological, archaeological and paleobotanical sources indicate that C₃ plants were grown and zooarchaeological data indicates that herd animals were brought in &ldquo;on the hoof&rdquo; for consumption. While these data cannot directly identify reliance on imported foods within Petra, the consumption of plant types not suited for Petra&rsquo;s arid environment may suggest they supplemented some locally grown crops with those imported from elsewhere. Finally, through the use of a multidisciplinary approach the data produced allows a more informed interpretation for future isotope studies.</p>