The Evolution of the Human Head
By D. Lieberman. 2011
195 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In one sense, human heads function much like those of other mammals. We use them to chew, smell, swallow, think, hear, and so on. But, in other respects, the human head is quite unusual. Unlike other animals, even our great ape cousins, our heads are short and wide, very big brained, snoutless, largely furless, and perched on a short, nearly vertical neck. Daniel E. Lieberman sets out to explain how the human head works, and why our heads evolved in this peculiarly human way. Exhaustively researched and years in the making, this innovative book documents how the many components of the head function, how they evolved since we diverged from the apes, and how they interact in diverse ways both functionally and developmentally, causing them to be highly integrated. This integration not only permits the head's many units to accommodate each other as they grow and work, but also facilitates evolutionary change. Lieberman shows how, when, and why the major transformations evident in the evolution of the human head occurred. The special way the head is integrated, Lieberman argues, made it possible for a few developmental shifts to have had widespread effects on craniofacial growth, yet still permit the head to function exquisitely. This is the first book to explore in depth what happened in human evolution by integrating principles of development and functional morphology with the hominin fossil record. "The Evolution of the Human Head" will permanently change the study of human evolution and has widespread ramifications for thinking about other branches of evolutionary biology.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d926b015b90071be3cf598d0b5a6da0ecb320c7
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Cranial integration and modularity: insights into evolution and development from morphometric data (2013, background): “Many studies of morphological integration in the primate skull are concerned with the covariation of specific anatomical or developmental components, which has been a been the subject of extensive discussion in physical anthropology and primatology (e.g.Lieberman 2011).”
- Craniofacial Feminization, Social Tolerance, and the Origins of Behavioral Modernity (2014, background): “We follow Lieberman (2011) in considering these “H. helmei/transitional” specimens as early representatives of H. sapiens, because they possess derived cranial base angles (CBA) within the range of extant human populations.”