Dentition of the Mugharet El'Aliya Fossil Human Maxilla, Morocco
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: This study follows up on our recent morphological analysis of the juvenile maxilla from Mugharet el'Aliya, Morocco. Although this specimen shows a reportedly archaic morphology, likely due to its large size, 3D shape analyses indicated affinities with early Homo sapiens. Here, we conducted an in-depth comparative investigation of the associated dentition to further clarify this individual's phylogenetic and taxonomic affinities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Our analyses were based on three kinds of data: (a) external crown dimensions and non-metric features, analyzed via summary statistics; (b) CT scan data enabling the study of internal structures (enamel-dentine junction) via geometric morphometrics; and (c) high-resolution replicas of the external surface of the upper canine enabling the study of perikymata numbers via probability functions. The comparative samples included Middle Pleistocene (Chibanian) Europeans and Africans, Neanderthals, and early and later H. sapiens. RESULTS: Mugharet el'Aliya showed the greatest similarities in external and internal tooth morphology with early and later H. sapiens. Perikymata counts cluster the upper canine with H. sapiens. However, its canine and fourth premolar are megadont at a level generally atypical for H. sapiens. DISCUSSION: Our analyses of the dentition of the Mugharet el'Aliya individual support our previous findings on the morphological analysis of the maxilla, placing this fossil closest to H. sapiens. Our study further strengthens the evidence connecting fossils from the North African Aterian to those from Western Asia, especially Qafzeh. We also provide the first comparative analysis of a permanent upper canine from the Aterian fossil record.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".