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Discussion in 'Introductions' started by Halluxdad, Nov 28, 2011.

  1. Halluxdad

    Halluxdad Member


    Members do not see these Ads. Sign Up.
    I decided to joint the Podiatry Arena after seeing posts by Dr. Robert Kidd and Dr. Kevin Kirby. I am a podiatrist in the US, in practice for more than 25 years. I have a long time interest in physical anthropology, where I was a graduate student before becoming a podiatrist. I recently received a masters degree in forensic anthropology and am now working on my PhD dissertation concerning the osteology of the hyper mobile flatfoot and how such information may be useful in understanding the evolution of the human foot. The Podiatry Arena looks like a good place to share my ideas with others who study the functional anatomy of bipedal locomotion and have clinical experience in dealing with the its pathomechanics of the human foot.
     
  2. Rob Kidd

    Rob Kidd Well-Known Member

    Hi there - glad to hear thaat we have "persuaded" you to join. Evolutionary medicine, after a rather slow start, is now a major trend. Of course one has the odd nutter Creationist fighting it - King Canute style (he tried to stop the tide rising), but it is making an important contribution to diagnosis and treatment. Genetics is where it starts - because that of course is where evolution happens - in many different but related ways. Sadly, medicine has fads, trends and fashions, but at the end of the day, it is, at least in great part, simply a branch of applied biology (ignoring the "art" component. Thus it should treated with the principles of biology. Have fun!
     
  3. Heather J Bassett

    Heather J Bassett Well-Known Member

    Again welcome, do have fun and I look forward to following the input from you both!!

    Cheers
     
  4. Halluxdad

    Halluxdad Member

    I agree on the genetic basis of variability; however in your work using canonical variates analysis on such bones as the tarsal elements of hominoids, you studied the phenotypic expression of that genetic variability. This is what I am interested in, the variability in the tarsal elements of modern humans and how this variability may be useful in understanding the function of the foot in the bipedal locomotion of earlier hominid groups, such as the australopithecines.
     
  5. Rob Kidd

    Rob Kidd Well-Known Member

    Its been a long day - and I have been dragged out of retirement to deal with a psycho-geriatric unit. I have dealt with 50 patients in two days, been knee'd in the nuts, had my hair pulled and been spat at. Give me a day to recover, and I will give you a lucid answer to your issue - in the mean time, try not to separate quite so hard, phenetics and genetics; canonical variates gives one a scary insight into this. Rob
     
  6. Rob Kidd

    Rob Kidd Well-Known Member

    Hi there Halluxdad (what an odd name?!). OK, got my brain back. You are quite correct to talk about phenotypic expression - but behind it lies stuff a load more complex. Principal components - and its far more powerful brother, Canonical variates - are not new. They have been around, or at least have their roots in the work of Hotelling and others in about 1900. What was required to make them work was a powerful computer - that we now have. Even 21 years ago, on my first IBM clone - an XT it was difficult. I used to program a piece of SAS (a REAL stats package, not one of these toys) and set it going on Friday night - by Monday morning it would have the answers! Now - it takes about 5 seconds. However, I digress. In the early 60's A groups from the Birmingham (UK) school of anatomy noted some odd stuff when working on the primate pelvis pelvis. All their dimensions were chosen so as to represent functionally important features. Along the first canonical variate, they found mainly size related shape information - often related to sex. Along the second, they found mainly shape information related to function. Great - and entirely logical. THEN, they undertook a similar study, but with dimensions chosen as best they could NOT to represent functionally importand features. Along the first they found the same. Along the second they found that their species were ordered in a phylogenetic sequence. That is, they found shape information not obviousdly to do with funtion, but to do with genetics. So I did foot stuff, and looked further than the first and second CV. With functionally chosen dimensions, I found size & sex along 1st, shape to do with function along the second, and shape to do with genetics along the 3rd. It didn't seem to matter where I looked (and others such as my mate and ex-student Bernie Zipfel in Africa) this pattern ermerges. And one can see it with fossil interpolations - just done that in Science with A. sediba. If you want to know more - write to me privately and I will send you some papers. Together with others in my (very informal) group, we have published perhaps 30 papers and a few book chapters on this area. In particular, one chapter was in "Shaping Primate Evolution" in the Cambridge University Press - it addresses many of the methodological issues involved. Its all good! Rob
     
  7. Ian Linane

    Ian Linane Well-Known Member

    Hi Guys
    This, for me, is an area I have no real grasp or understanding of but is quite fascinating, once I've swallowed a dictionary of terms:).

    Thank you having the discussion here. I would be interested in some references that might allow me to read in simple terms some of what is going on here so as to get my head better around it. Is there anything for people like me to do a bit of homework on so I don't waste your space with unnecessary questions please?
     
  8. Rob Kidd

    Rob Kidd Well-Known Member

    It is difficult to know where to start. You may want to look at the early work of my mentor, Professor Charles Oxnard; in the early 70's he wrote a couple of books on methods and case studies of this sort of thing - they are quite readable. The stats texts tend to be a bit heavy - the bible is a book called "numerical taxonomy" with one recently deceased UK author - Sneath, from Leicester. Of course these are not specific to foot bones. I have pasted below those things that We/I have published on either modern or fossil feet.

    You should recognise that there is two, perhaps discrete areas of utilisation of canonical variates in this context. 1) identifying patters of morphological variation in groups (eg humans, chimps etc), and that of identifying functional affinities of unknown specimens - such as a fossil. The stuff below is about both.

    Feel free to email me privately and I can elaborate.

    Cheers, Rob




    Book Chapters
    – Kidd, R.S. On the Nature of Morphology: Selected Canonical Variates Analysis of the Hominoid Hindtarsus and Their Interpretation. In: Shaping Primate Evolution. Anapol, German & Jablonski (Eds.) pp.162-92. Cambridge University Press. 2004.
    – Kidd, R.S. Individual and Integrated Analyses of Tarsal Morpology: A Case study in Humans In: The Causes and Effects of Human Variation. Henneberg M (Ed.) pp. 61-81. Department of Anatomical Sciences, The University of Adelaide 2001.
    – Kidd, R.S. Patterns of Morphological Discrimination in the Human Talus: a Consideration of the Case for Negative Function. (Kidd & Oxnard) In: Perspectives in Human Biology Volume Three: Human Adaptability: Future Trends and Lessons From the Past. Oxnard & Freedman (Eds.) pp. 51-70. World Scientific, Singapore 1997.

    Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications
    – Zipfel B., DeSilva J.M., Kidd R.S., Carlson K.J., Churchill S.E., Berger L.R. 2011 The Foot and Ankle of Australopithecus sediba. Science 333, 1417-1420
    – Zipfel B., DeSilva J.M. & Kidd R.S. 2009. Earliest Complete Hominin Fifth Metatarsal – Implications for the Evolution of the Lateral Column of the Foot. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 140: 532-545.
    – Zipfel, B. and Kidd R.S. 2008. Size and Shape of a human foot bone from Klasies River main site, South Africa. Palaeontologica africana. 43: 51–56
    – Zipfel, B. and Kidd R.S. 2006. Hominin First Metatarsals (SKX 5017 and SK 1813) from Sterkfontein: a Morphometric Analysis. Journal of Comparative Human Biology 57: 117-31.
    – Kidd R.S and Oxnard C.E. 2005. Little Foot and Big Thoughts – a Re-evaluation of the Stw573 Foot from Sterkfontein, South Africa. Journal of Comparative Human Biology 55:3 189-212
    – Kidd, R.S. and Oxnard C.E. 2002. Patterns of Morphological Discrimination in Selected Human Tarsal Elements. The American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 117: 169-81.
    – Kidd R.S. 1999. Evolution of the Hindfoot: A model of Adaptation with Evidence from the Fossil Record. Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association 89: 2-17.
    – Kidd R.S. 1998. The Past is the key to the present: Thoughts on the origins of human foot structure, function and dysfunction as seen from the fossil record. The Foot 8: 75-84.
    – Kidd R.S., O’Higgins P. and Oxnard C.E. 1996. The OH8 Foot: a reappraisal of the functional morphology of the hindfoot utilizing a multivariate analysis. The Journal of Human Evolution. 31: 269-291
     
  9. Halluxdad

    Halluxdad Member


    Rob, this is an excellent list of references. I'm familiar with several of them, including your chapter in Shaping Primate Evolution. I've been a fan of Dr. Oxnard since the early seventies, though I must admit that I could not fully appreciate the mathematics involved until recently (I still don't understand it all; your concise description of CVA given in a previous post was a great example of its use). It's amazing what we can see using statistical analysis that we cannot see with the naked eye.

    Dr. Jeremy DeSilva was a reader on my master's thesis, and has agreed to be a member of my PhD committee. I recommend looking at his work as well. I find our clinical knowledge of foot function as podiatrists contributes a great deal to the understanding of the evolution of bipedality and the fossil record that such physical anthropologists as Dr. DeSilva are also investigating.

    Rob, I have not been able to get hold of some of your authored papers; perhaps you have copies you can make available. I'm especially interested in reading your PhD dissertation; I was wondering if you can direct me as to how I may obtain a copy.

    Much thanks.

    David
     
  10. Halluxdad

    Halluxdad Member

    Rob, you have provided an excellent list of references. I'm familiar with several of them, including your chapter in Shaping Primate Evolution. I've been a fan of Dr. Oxnard since the early seventies, though I must admit that I could not fully appreciate the mathematics involved until recently (I still don't understand it all; your concise description of CVA given in a previous post was a great example of its use). It's amazing what we can see using statistical analysis that we cannot see with the naked eye.

    I have not been able to get hold of some of your authored papers; perhaps you have copies you can make available. I'm especially interested in reading your PhD dissertation; I was wondering if you can direct me as to how I may obtain a copy.

    Much thanks.

    David
     
  11. Halluxdad

    Halluxdad Member

    Dr. Jeremy DeSilva was a reader on my master's thesis, and has agreed to be a member of my PhD committee. I recommend looking at his work as well. I find our clinical knowledge of foot function as podiatrists contributes a great deal to the understanding of the evolution of bipedality and the fossil record that such physical anthropologists as Dr. DeSilva are also investigating.

    David
     
  12. Rob Kidd

    Rob Kidd Well-Known Member

    Such is the nature of the modern world and the internet. You may note that Jerry is a co-author on a few of our works - we have never met!
     
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