Abstract:

Geometric morphometry has started to play an important role in paleoanthropology and archaeology. Almost all new discoveries are examined with this method, and also old material is re-examined in the light of this method. Traditional morphometry studies are based on measurement of lengths, depths and widths of structures, distances between landmarks, angles or ratios. These measurements do not yield all information about shape and therefore a new method has started to be used, Geometric Morphometrics. This new method can be described as: the analysis of all geometric information of the data which are derived from Cartesian coordinates of landmarks. Landmarks are the discrete anatomical points which can be repeatedly found in all studied materials. If these two methods are compared, geometric morphometry applications show some advantages against traditional morphometry and provides more complete information. This more complete information provides better results but also a better visualization possibility in geometric morphometry.

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