Neanderthal and Palaeolithic Homo Sapiens Skeletal Measurements

Richard Clark's dataset includes measurements of fossil remains for most Neanderthal and some Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Homo sapiens individuals. The data, last updated in May 2026, is a 147.5 KB collection of bone lengths, thicknesses, and other metrics. Subadult Neanderthals are all represented, alongside many adults.

Use Cases

• Compare skeletal growth patterns between Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens based on bone length and thickness measurements.
• Analyze morphological variation within the Neanderthal population using adult and subadult fossil data.
• Train models for taxonomic classification of hominin fossils based on osteometric features.

Strengths

• Covers most known Neanderthal individuals, providing a relatively complete sample.
• Explicitly includes all known subadult Neanderthal specimens, which may be rare in other collections.
• Data is shared under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license, allowing for broad reuse.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for statistical analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset's 147.5 KB size indicates a limited scope, likely containing summary measurements rather than raw scans or 3D models.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Measurements taken from fossil remains, as described by the author.

Time Range

Middle and Upper Palaeolithic periods.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-04 23:55:47; freshness should be verified.