Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nuchal ligaments are relatively well understood and have venerable histories of recognition in extant euungulates, canids, elephants, and humans, but whether any anatomical structures in other taxa, both extant and extinct, qualify as nuchal ligaments is unclear because the term ‘nuchal ligament’ lacks a clear, narrow, consistently applied definition. Possible definitions of the term could be etymological, taxonomic, compositional, or morphological/topological, or a combination thereof. Currently, a de facto morphological/topological definition of ‘nuchal ligament’ sensu stricto seems most common: a nuchal ligament is an epaxial, cervical ligament with a funiculus that is elevated above the cervical spinous processes and connected to them only via laminae. However, many references to ‘nuchal ligaments’ in both extant and extinct taxa instead seem to employ a broader, etymological definition that encompasses numerous different compositions, morphologies and topologies. Several, largely untested assumptions have been made about functional and osteological correlates of a nuchal ligament, such as possessing a ‘large’ or ‘heavy’ head and/or a ‘long’ neck, possessing specific features on the occipital region of the skull, and possessing specific morphologies or dimensions of the cervical and cranial thoracic spinous processes. These assumptions have led to corollary assumptions that many extinct tetrapods—particularly those phylogenetically far removed from taxa known to possess them—had nuchal ligaments, but until these presumed correlates are tested and demonstrated in extant taxa, such assumptions remain purely speculative, and alternative cranio-cervical support mechanisms also must be considered. Depending on the definition applied, attributions of nuchal ligaments to extinct taxa, and even to some extant taxa (including humans), may be references to other sorts of morphologically and topologically distinct epaxial structures such as supraspinous ligaments and fibrous septa/raphes that occupy similar anatomical positions as nuchal ligaments sensu stricto. ‘Nuchal ligament’ requires a narrow definition to understand what, if any, features correlate with the presence of the ligament, as well as what taxa have convergently evolved the structure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.030 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.020 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.005 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".