How do we know that smaller Hominid species like Homo Floriensis aren’t just misidentified juvenile members of other Hominid species?
In: Earth Science
Checking for growth plates in the skull, position of wisdom teeth, bone loss etc can give you a fairly decent idea of how old the bones were when they became no longer live tissue. Apes have known growth/ loss rates for healthy individuals. Poor nutrition, extreme prolonged stress can skew these results, but teeth composition can give you an idea of nutrition condition to rule out variables there. Overall bone composition and environmental data can give you an idea on environmental stressors to rule out variables there.
You can tell people are still growing by if their bones are fused or not. For example if the femur is still growing the caps wont be attached, if they are attached you know they’ve reached their adult height for that bone.
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