Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 41 (3) 2013

Annotation:  The Bohunician in Moravia and Adjoining Regions A Paleolithic Cache at Tolbor (Northern Mongolia) Upper Paleolithic “Sounding Artifacts” from Mesin, Ukraine: Modifi cation Marks An Experimental Technological Study of Upper Paleolithic Kostenki-Type Figurines Geoinformation Modeling of Environments Favorable for Prehistoric Humans of the Altai Mountains Mechanisms Shaping the Transition to Farming in Europe and the North American Woodland Intramural Burials of Children at Bronze Age Sites in the Southern Urals (Early 2nd Millennium BC) Clay Plates with Stylized Ornithomorphic Representations from Section VI of the Gorbunovo Peat Bog Composite Bows from Uch-Kurbu in Kyrgyzstan Bronze Age Copper Mining in the Mugodzhary An Ongoing Tradition: The Use of Russian Metal Dishware in Ob Ugrian Rites The Spring Festival of Akaska / Bidzim Nunal Celebrated by the Southern Udmurts in the Late 19th–Ear The Iranian Chapter in the History of the Chuvash A Micro Computerized Tomography (X-Ray Microscopy) of the Hand Phalanx of the Denisova Girl The Foramina Transversaria of the Sunghir 2 and 3 Cervical Vertebrae Dental Affi nities of the Irmen People, Western Siberia Paleopathology of the Population of Krasnoyarsk, Central Siberia (Pokrovskiy and Voskresensko-Preobr   

The Foramina Transversaria of the Sunghir 2 and 3 Cervical Vertebrae

S.A. Lacy and E. Trinkaus.

The Mid Upper Paleolithic immature Sunghir 2 and 3 skeletal remains exhibit non-closure and doubling of several of their cervical vertebral foramina transversaria. Both exhibit non-closure of the atlas (C1) foramina. Sunghir 3 also exhibits foraminal non-closure in her C4 to C5. Sunghir 2 has doubling of the foramen on C4 and C6, whereas Sunghir 3 has it on C4 to C6. The anatomical distribution of these variants places Sunghir 2 and 3 at the limits of recent human cervical vertebral morphological variation. The correspondence between these variants and vascular pathways is unclear, and therefore their implications remain uncertain.

Keywords: Foramen transversarium, Upper Paleolithic, vertebra, vertebral artery, paleopathology, paleoanthropology.