Discerning Dispersals along the Pacific and Interior Corridors: Contributions of Geometric Morphometrics to the Peopling of the Americas

Recent discussions of human dispersals into the Americas have integrated available genomic data, locations and dates of archaeological sites, chronologies for initial biological viability of the Pacific coast and western Canadian ice-free corridors, and respective hypotheses to explain the initial peopling of the continents. Currently, these lines of evidence are incomplete given the lack of geographically and chronologically continuous data available for any one avenue of research. Here we discuss the potential for geometric morphometric shape analysis of human skeletal remains and stone projectile artifacts to supplement these data and expand our understanding of human dispersals into the Americas. The evolutionarily plastic nature of human skeletons and artifacts offers an alternative means of testing hypotheses of initial dispersal events and human adaptation to changing climate and ecosystems.