Morphometrics is concerned with the study of variations and change in the form (size and shape) of organisms or objects adding a quantitative element to descriptions and thereby facilitating the comparison of different objects and organisms. This volume provides an introduction to morphometrics in a clear and simple way without recourse to complex mathematics and statistics. This introduction is followed by a series of case studies describing the variety of applications of morphometrics from paleontology and evolutionary ecology to archaeological artifacts analysis. This is followed by a presentation of future applications of morphometrics and state of the art software for analyzing and comparing shape.

Inhalt

and Historical Review of the Subject.- Why Morphometrics?.- Morphometrics: An Historical Essay.- Methodological Approach (Quantification and Visualization of Shape, and Traditional and Geometric Morphometrics).- Controlling for Curvature in the Quantification of Leaf Form.- Discriminating Groups of Organisms.- Visual Analysis in Archaeology. An Artificial Intelligence Approach.- Evolution of the Upper Cretaceous Oysters: Traditional Morphometrics Approach.- Applications.- Combining Shape Data and Traditional Measurements with the 2B-PLS: Testing the Covariation Between Avian Brain Size and Cranial Shape Variation as an Example.- Biogeographic Analysis Using Geometric Morphometrics: Clines in Skull Size and Shape in a Widespread African Arboreal Monkey.- Stock Identification of Marine Populations.- Correlating Shape Variation with Feeding Performance to Test for Adaptive Divergence in Recently Invading Stickleback Populations from Swiss peri-alpine Environments.- Macroevolutionary Trends in the Skull of Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs - The Largest Terrestrial Animals to Have Ever Lived.- The Use of Geometric Morphometrics in Studying Butterfly Wings in an Evolutionary Ecological Context.- Towards Automating Artifact Analysis: A Study Showing Potential Applications of Computer Vision and Morphometrics to Artifact Typology.- Morphometric Analysis Applied to the Archaeological Pottery of the Valley of Guadalquivir.- Some Applications of Geometric Morphometrics to Archaeology.- Scope to the Future of Morphometrics.- Prospectus: The Future of Morphometrics.- Morphometrics and Cosmology: Short Note and Future Hope.- Morphometrics in Past: Integrating Morphometrics with General Data Analysis Software.