Sacrum morphology supports taxonomic heterogeneity of Australopithecus africanus at Sterkfontein Member 4

Abstract

The presence of multiple Australopithecus species at Sterkfontein Member 4, South Africa (2.07 to 2.61 Ma) is highly contentious. Quantitative assessments of craniodental and postcranial variability remain inconclusive. Using geometric morphometrics, we compared the sacrum of the small-bodied, presumed female subadult Australopithecus africanus skeleton Sts 14 and the large, alleged male adult StW 431 against a geographically diverse sample of modern humans, and two species for each of the genera Gorilla, Pan and Pongo. The probabilities of sampling morphologies as distinct as Sts 14 and StW 431 from a single species ranged from 1.3 to 2.5% for the human sample, and from 0.0 to 4.5% for the ape sample, depending on the analysis performed. Neither differences in developmental or geologic age nor sexual dimorphism could account for the differences between StW 431 and Sts 14 sacra. These findings support earlier claims of taxonomic heterogeneity at Sterkfontein Member 4.