Data for: A missing piece of the Papio puzzle: Gorongosa baboon phenostructure and intrageneric relationships

The sample comprises 363 cranial specimens (homologous three-dimensional [3D] landmark configurations representing the baboon craniofacial skeleton). The sample combines coordinate data obtained from two different sources: eight baboon skulls from Gorongosa National Park and a comparative sample of 355 baboon skulls from an earlier study conducted by Dunn et al. (2013). The eight baboon skulls from Gorongosa National Park were collected during the 2016 and 2017 fieldwork. The skulls were from naturally deceased and taphonomically-skeletonized individuals. The skulls were surface-scanned in three different views using a NextEngine Desktop 3D Scanner from NextEngine, Inc., operating with both laser and normal light. Each view was a 360º scan with 11 divisions. The geometric point resolution was set to 66 dots per inch (DPI). ScanStudio 2.0.2 software (NextEngine, Inc., 2006) was used to merge the view scans into a single-surface model. The surface models were imported into the Amira 5.5 software (Mercury Inc. USA). A set of 43 three-dimensional landmarks was digitized on each baboon craniofacial surface model. These 43 landmarks were selected from the configuration of landmarks used by Dunn et al. (2013). The comparative database corresponds to three hundred and fifty-five specimens with manually digitized coordinates from Dunn et al. (2013). In their database, specimens are grouped into one of the six commonly recognized species, with one subspecies identified for four individuals (P. ursinus griseipes). The database also included 318 geo-referenced specimens (274 geo-referenced specimens intersect with the 355 specimens labeled by species and sex). We subdivided P. cynocephalus into three subgroups by their geographic location: P. cynocephalus north (specimens located north of the Ruaha-Rufiji River in Central Tanzania; Zinner et al., 2015), P. cynocephalus south (specimens located south of the Ruaha-Rufiji River) and P. cynocephalus DRC (specimens located in the southern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, labeled as P. cynocephalus Zaire in the database from Dunn et al. 2013), which is included in the distribution area of Kinda baboons. Two specimens labeled as P. ursinus and one specimen labeled as P. cynocephalus had geographic coordinates locating their origin in Gorongosa. Therefore, the specimens were divided into 10 groups, taking into account the six-species scheme, the subspecies P. ursinus griseipes, the mtDNA paraphyly of P. cynocephalus