University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Anthropology Senior Theses Department of Anthropology Spring 4-24-2019 The Ontogeny of Basicranial Flexion in Children of African and European Ancestry Catarina M. Conran University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_seniortheses Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Conran, Catarina M., "The Ontogeny of Basicranial Flexion in Children of African and European Ancestry" (2019). Anthropology Senior Theses. Paper 190. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_seniortheses/190 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Ontogeny of Basicranial Flexion in Children of African and European Ancestry Abstract This study examined ontogenetic changes in the cranial base angle in individuals between the ages of 2 and 25 years old. Also, variation in the cranial base angle between males and females, and between blacks and whites was examined. This study was initially conceived as an examination of the spectrum of human variation in the growth and development of the basicranium, as well as its possible correlation to language development. This study was designed to replicate Lieberman and McCarthy’s 1999 examination of the processes of basicranial flexion, with additional consideration of variation by sex and by race. To that end, this study assessed a sample of 39 individuals, composed of 10 black males, 10 black females, 10 white males, and 9 white females. Individuals were drawn from the Krogman Growth Study, a mixed longitudinal and cross-sectional dataset housed at the Penn Museum. A total of 7 cranial base angles were measured, of which 5 were borrowed from Lieberman and McCarthy (designated CBA 1-5), and 2 from Zuckerman (1955) (designated Z1-2), to more thoroughly capture changes in spatial relationships between cranial bones.