作者：王令红 方开泰 郑玉颖

摘要：The systematic position of Gigantopithecus as in Hominoidea has been a subject of heated discussion among anthropologists for a long time. Several foreign scholars have discussed this problem from the view-point of numerical taxonomy. We try to reexamine the status of Gigantopithecus by means of multivariate discriminant analysis. In this paper we introduce the method of Bayes discriminant analysis and show the result we have obtained through its application.
    Gigantopithecus was compared to both modern man and the gorilla to determine whether it resembles the former or the latter. Our discriminant analysis is composed of two parts:(1) mandibles ( 5 variables: bicanine breadth, symphyseal height, corpus height and breadth at M₂, P₂—M₂ chord); (2) teeth (12 variables: length and breadth of I₂ through M₂). Male and female specimens are dealt with respectively.
    The result of discriminant analysis shows that the mandibles of both male and female Gigantopithecus are similar to those of gorilla, but the teeth, in contrast, more closely resemble those of modern man.
    The resemblance between Gigantopithecus and modern man may be regarded as an affinity, rather than a convergence. So Gigantopithecus should have ancestral status as a creature translated from ape to man, which was no longer arboreal, but lived on the ground. The change of food source led to the change of tire dental morphology and its size firstly and directly.

卷期：19卷 03期

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