Mandibular morphological variation is often used to examine various aspects of human palaeobiology. However, fossil and archeological skeletal remains are often fragmented/distorted and so are frequently excluded from studies. This leads to decreased sample sizes and, potentially, to biased results. Thus, it is of interest to restore the original anatomy of incomplete/distorted specimens. Thin plate splines (TPS), commonly used in Geometric Morphometrics (GM), offer the prospect of reconstruction of missing parts and particularly of interest here, missing landmarks.

中文翻译：

---

评估下颌骨虚拟重建的可靠性。

下颌形态变化常用于检查人类古生物学的各个方面。然而，化石和考古遗骸经常被破碎/扭曲，因此经常被排除在研究之外。这会导致样本数量减少，并有可能导致结果偏差。因此，感兴趣的是恢复不完整/变形标本的原始解剖结构。几何形态计量学（GM）中常用的薄板样条线（TPS）提供了重建缺失零件的机会，尤其是这里缺失的标志物。