The skull often described by past craniologists as “unique,” “transitional,” “emergent,” “Grimaldian” and “marginal” due to its pseudo-Australoid, pseudo-Andamanese or pseudo-Negroid traits (robusticity, alveolar prognathism combined with protruding nasal bones, wide nose, small braincase, low and narrow face, deep infraglabellar notch and supraorbital tori) is clearly different from Neanderthals and falls fully within UP cranial variation (Gerasimova, M. M. “Esche raz o paleoantropologicheskikh nakhodkakh v Kostenkakh.” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 2 (2010): 26-40). I’m not aware of a study that directly compares K14 with the roughly contemporaneous Hofmeyr skull from South Africa dated at 36,000 YBP and described (Grine et al. 2007) as forming a cluster with UP Europeans to the exclusion of modern Africans (K14 was not included in Grine et al.’s UP sample). But it would be appropriate to compare the two considering that K14 shows a pronounced Sub-Saharan African-related ancestry component (see below).
It’s noteworthy that both skulls are characterized by alveolar prognathism, large nasal breadth (pyriform aperture), deep infraglabellar notch and continuous supraorbital tori – the strongest form of expression of the supraorbital ridge (see below; the Hofmeyr skull is from Grine et al. 2007). K14 is a smaller skull than Hofmeyr, though. This trait makes it look more like modern Africans, while most UP skulls are as large as Hofmeyr. Hofmeyr’s dentition is poorly preserved but it has some Sinodont traits such as large second molars (M2) (Grine et al. 2007, 227-8). K14’s teeth lack incisor shoveling (this likely means that K14 had the ancestral state of EDAR gene) and the upper second molars are large buccolingually but small mesiodistally
