Fig. 3: Proximal femoral shape variance among early hominins, Neanderthals, and human groups (with and without hip fracture).
From: Evolutionary roots of the risk of hip fracture in humans
a Principal component analysis (PCA) plot in shape-space for the proximal femur of early hominins (light blue; N = 4), early Homo (light green; N = 3), Neanderthals (brown; N = 3), prehistoric (hunter-gatherers and early farmers, pink; N = 8), protohistoric (pastoralists, purple; N = 17), recent humans with non-osteoporotic fractures (red, N = 3), and recent humans (control group; aged 20–40 and 50–60 years old, gray; N = 101). PC1 (explains 26.8% of variance) distinguishes early hominins and early Homo from Neanderthals and modern humans. The non-osteoporotic fracture group fell on one side of the recent human cloud, whereas the Neanderthals, Prehistoric, and Protohistoric proximal femora were on the other side. b Heatmap and dendrograms produced based on the average Procrustes distances of each group from the mean shape of each group. The Prehistoric/Protohistoric group included Epi-Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, PPN early farmers, and Chalcolithic pastoralists. Recent humans included individuals aged 20–40 and 50–60 years. The fracture group included individuals with non-osteoporotic ICHF.
