Ashton’s Dental Data. The evolutionary status of fossils (Australopithecinae, Proconsul, etc.) stimulated considerable discussion in the 1950s. Particular attention has been paid to the teeth of the...

Ashton’s Dental Data. The evolutionary status of fossils (Australopithecinae, Proconsul, etc.) stimulated considerable discussion in the 1950s. Particular attention has been paid to the teeth of the fossils, comparing their overall dimensions with those of human beings and of the extant great apes. As “controls” measurements have been taken on the teeth of three types of modern man (British, West African native, Australian aboriginal) and of the three living great apes (gorilla, orangutan, and chimpanzee). The data in the table below are taken from Ashton et al. (1957), p. 565, who used 2-D projections to compare the measurements. Andrews (1972) also used an excerpt of these data to illustrate his methodology. The values in the table are not the original measurements but the first eight canonical variables produced from the data in order to maximize the sum of distances between different pairs of populations.

Andrews (1972) plotted curves over the range
 and concluded that the graphs clearly distinguished humans, the gorillas and orangutans, the chimpanzees, and the fossils. Andrews noted that the curve for a fossil (Proconsul africanus) corresponds to a plot inconsistent with that of all other fossils as well as humans and apes. Graphically present this data using (a) star plots, (b) Andrews plots, and (c) Chernoff faces.