Open Research Scan Archive

The express purpose of the collection is to facilitate research in skeletal biology, anthropology, biology, medicine, and related disciplines.  It is hoped that the database will become a clearinghouse for CT data of all kinds, including CT’s of fossil specimens.  This database will allow us to better interpret such fossils by allowing us to place them in a proper comparative perspective. 

We are committed to the free access of data.  Those wishing to do research on this data may either arrange to do so at our fully equipped computer lab at Penn, or request specific CT's be sent to them at their own institutions.  Researchers who already have CT's will be encouraged to contribute to them to the archive in the spirit of free access to data. 

To date, the following institutions have contributed to the archive:

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
American Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
Columbia University Department of Anthropology

Description of specimens:

To date, almost all the modern human crania are from the Samuel George Morton collection housed and curated at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.  The original Morton collection is composed of approximately 1200 human crania (most without mandibles) and collected from both archaeological and recent contexts (1820’s to 1851).  After Morton’s death, his student, J. Aitken Meigs, continued with the collection which totals approximately 1800 crania.   Although much controversy surrounds the conclusions that were part of Morton’s work especially his use of cranial capacity as a measure of relative superiority of living human races, everyone agrees that he was a meticulous scholar and took copious notes on the geographic and population derivation of the crania.  

An example of a catalogue entry:

“434.  A Dutchman of noble family, born in Utrecht, and for several years a captain in the army at Batavia, in the Island of Java, where he died under thirty years of age.  He was handsome, not deficient in talent, and of an amiable disposition, but devoted to conviviality and dissipation, which finally destroyed him.  Dr. Doornik, late of Batavia, from whom I obtained this cranium, gave me the above facts from personal knowledge.  I.C. 114”

The Morton collection, derived from the mid-1800’s, included individuals whose population background are clearly noted and at a time period when population-mixing was less likely (but certainly did occur) than it is today.  Individuals of mixed ancestry were noted by Morton and not included in this study.  Of course the possibility remains that ancestry was not known or miss-recorded; generally the catalogue entries note confusion and/or discrepancies.  

The archive also includes scans of 3 modern human crania along with scans of their matching plaster endocasts created by Ralph Holloway at Columbia University (see below)

In addition, a Peruvian mummy from the Max Uhle collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology was also scanned and archived as part of the archive.  This specimen was excavated in 1886 in Pachacamac, coastal Peru, and dates to ~600 AD.


The Primates:

The archive also contains scans of specimens representing ten other non-human primate species:

Pan troglodytes (common chimpanzee, 20 specimens)
Gorilla gorilla (gorilla, 2)
Pongo pygmaeus (orangutan, 5)
Hylobates sp. (gibbon, 1)
Papio sp. (baboon, 1)
Erythrocebus patas (patas monkey, 1)
Aotus trivirgatus (owl monkey, 1)
Cebus sp. (capuchin, 1)
Tarsius tarsius (tarsier, 1)
Lemur sp. (lemur, 1)

18 of the Pan troglodytes specimens are from the American Museum of Natural History, in the Von Luschan collection.  The Tarsius specimen comes from the Department of Mammology at the Smithsonian Institution.  The Pongo pygmeaus specimens come from the Harrison and Hiller University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology expedition to Borneo in the late 19th Century.  These specimens were wild-shot, prepared in Borneo, and shipped to Philadelphia.  The remainder of the specimens are from the skeletal collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and were originally obtained as part of a gift from the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.  No data regarding age, sex, or geographic origin accompanied these specimens, unfortunately.  They were all collected from the 1880’s-1890’s.
 

If you have any questions or CT's you would like to share please contact us.