Jonathan Paige
@jnpaige.bsky.social
Archaeologist interested in the evolution of technology.
Research Scientist
Center for Applied Fire and Ecosystem Science,
New Mexico Consortium
Research Scientist
Center for Applied Fire and Ecosystem Science,
New Mexico Consortium
Reposted by Jonathan Paige
Despite its widespread use in paleoanthropology, PCA is ill-suited and unreliable for inferring hominin evolutionary relationships from morphological data. Studies of hominin systematics that rely on PCA as a means of inferring morphological and phylogenetic affinity should be revisited. end/
Principal Components Analysis fails to recover phylogenetic structure in hominins
Objectives: Paleoanthropologists often utilize geometric morphometrics and principal components analysis (PCA) to interpret shape variation within the hominin fossil record. It is common practice to i...
doi.org
November 1, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Despite its widespread use in paleoanthropology, PCA is ill-suited and unreliable for inferring hominin evolutionary relationships from morphological data. Studies of hominin systematics that rely on PCA as a means of inferring morphological and phylogenetic affinity should be revisited. end/