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Summary: Allometry and Apparent Paradoxes in Human Limb
Proportions: Implications for Scaling Factors
Benjamin M. Auerbach1
* and Adam D. Sylvester2
1
Department of Anthropology, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville, Knoxville, TN 37996
2
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
KEY WORDS geometric mean; stature; brachial and crural index; relative limb length
ABSTRACT It has been consistently demonstrated
that human proximal limb elements exhibit negative
allometry, while distal elements scale with positive al-
lometry. Such scaling implies that longer limbs will
have higher intralimb indices, a phenomenon not
borne out by empirical analyses. This, therefore, cre-
ates a paradox within the limb allometry literature.
This study shows that these apparently conflicting
results are the product of two separate phenomena.
First, the use of the geometric mean of limb elements
produces allometry coefficients that are not independ-
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