Osamu Kondo

Anatomy of the Neandertal Infant Skeleton from Dederiyeh Cave, Syria

A human infant skeleton was discovered in the Mousterian formation at Dederiyeh Cave, northern Syria, in 1993 by the team of the Japan-Syrian joint expedition (Akazawa et al. 1995a,b). The skeleton was lying in the expected anatomical position embedded in a stratigraphic entity that contained a “Tabun B-type” Mousterian industry. The preservation of the bones was remarkably good, and all the vertebrae and the left ribs were identifiable (Figure 1). This paper will focus only on the anatomical aspects of the skeleton. The good preservation will allow us to assign the specimen to a taxon fairly easily despite its immature state.