Dataset of assessment for prominent exostosis projecting from the occipital squama

Pervasive skeletal morphological adaptations in modern humans are rare. Nevertheless, in our earlier article ((Shahar_et_al-2016-Journal_of_Anatomy) we reported the development of prominent exostosis in the skulls of young adults (41%; 10 - 31 mm) emanating from the external occipital protuberance (EOP), the site at which the upper trapezius muscle tendon fibers and ligamentum nuchae attach to the occipital squama. The focus of our current investigation was to identify the distribution of enlarged EOP (EEOP) in a wider age spectrum of the population (n=1200, age 18 - 86). Here we show that sex, the degree of forward head protraction (FHP) and age predicted the presence of EEOP in 72.3 % of those studied. Males were 5.48 times more likely to have EEOP than females, and every increase in FHP resulted in a 1.03 times increased likelihood of EEOP. However, every incremental increase in age group (by decade) resulted in a 0.98 decrease in the likelihood of having an EEOP. This is surprising, as the frequency and severity of degenerative skeletal features in humans are associated typically with the ageing and are, therefore, more likely to be observed in the elderly.