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Sorry to take so long to respond; limited FReeping time.

The original post from bvw asked if the series of skulls could be interpreted as variance among modern humans. I responded that the shape of the jaw would be interesting in this regard, since everything I've read about human evolution says that our jaws are parabolic, whereas other apes have a more U-shaped jaw.

I doubt very much that any people, deformed or not, have a U-shaped jaw. I did a Google search, and got quite a few more references to the general feature, but no numbers. I'm not sure I would know how to interpret numbers here, anyhow.

So, the bottom line is, I don't know the variance in this feature among people, and couldn't find exact data in a quickie search. However, if I were bvw, I wouldn't get my hopes up about the skull sequence being some kind of variance/deformation of modern humans (unless he can produce the varying jaw shapes from modern people); all the references I've seen have stressed the parabolic (human) vs U-shaped (ape) contrast, and also intermediate *fossil* shapes.

This is "anecdotal" (but, in the end, every datum is an anecdote of somebody's): My wife sees a thousand or so jaws a year working as a dental hygienist. She says jaws vary quite a bit, some are more rounded, some more square.