Posted on 01/25/2006 8:52:48 AM PST by blam
Time changes modern human's face
By Rebecca Morelle
BBC News science reporter
Our ancestors had more prominent features but lower foreheads
Researchers have found that the shape of the human skull has changed significantly over the past 650 years.
Modern people possess less prominent features but higher foreheads than our medieval ancestors.
Writing in the British Dental Journal, the team took careful measurements of groups of skulls spanning across 30 generations.
The scientists said the differences between past and present skull shapes were "striking".
Plague victims
The team used radiographic films of skulls to record extensive measurements taken by a computer.
They looked at 30 skulls dating from the mid-14th Century. They had come from the unlucky victims of the plague. The skulls had been excavated from plague pits in the 1980s in London.
Another 54 skulls examined by the team were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose which sank off the south coast of England in 1545.
All the skulls were compared with 31 recent orthodontic records from the School of Dentistry in Birmingham.
"This new research shows how bones... can provide more knowledge to the scientific community, and ultimately the public"
Professor Robert Foley, Cambridge University The two principal differences discovered were that our ancestors had more prominent features, but their cranial vault - the distance measured from the eyes to the top of the skull - was smaller.
Dr Peter Rock, lead author of the study and director of orthodontistry at Birmingham University, told the BBC News website: "The astonishing finding is the increased cranial vault heights.
"The increase is very considerable. For example, the vault height of the plague skulls were 80mm, and the modern ones were 95mm - that's in the order of 20% bigger, which is really rather a lot."
He suggests that the increase in size may be due to an increase in mental capacity over the ages.
Repatriating bones
The study of human remains has previously fallen into controversy, and a report commissioned by the UK government called for human remains to be repatriated where possible.
The ancient skulls used in this study, from which the radiographic films were taken, have either been reburied or are now housed in museums.
Professor Robert Foley is director of the Leverhulme Centre for Evolutionary Studies at Cambridge University, and sat on a government working group which has drawn up guidelines on working with human remains.
"The study of human remains can provide vital information about our past. There is a huge interest in our biological past - both from an evolutionary and a historical point of view - and research into human bones can tell us a great deal," he said.
"This new research shows how bones, and even the records of bones, can provide more knowledge to the scientific community, and ultimately the public."
Micro-evolution, Macro-evolution, and Speciation.
Another service of Darwin Central, the conspiracy that cares.
This can be tested you know.
I think it's just a case of a variety within a single species being replaced by a different, and already known, variety!
Justification for the loss of wisdom teeth.....no room for them as lower jaw becomes smaller and sits directly under the upper jaw as opposed to a more posterior placement in other primates.
Animals are not dealt with as readily.
Yup. As I like to point out, If we were to measure all the human features on earth today (all Modern Humans), the range of those measurements would easily include Neanderthals and even more archaic humans. We are one human species and we are all still here in bits and pieces all over the globe.
"The British Dental Journal?!"
Could almost qualify as an oxymoron.
I've seen studies that equate brain size with IQ. Neanderthals had bigger brains than we do, did they have a higher IQ?
This article is about human skull measurements, and I'm wondering if someone more knowledgable in this particular field of study can tell me if the sampling size is statistically meaningful. - (Dimensio)
To: Dimensio
Hey, the discussion was about a CHANGE IN SKULL MEASUREMENTS, not about human skull size - (muawiyah)
I can't disagree.
English And Welsh Are Races Apart
Not bad. But it looks more like a general cognitive collapse, rather than mere creationism.
Baseball caps, the answer is always baseball caps.
I've actually been accused of being a low-brow degenerate before.
LOL! And BIG HAIR for women!
Well, cr#p. There goes another perfectly good thread. Thanks for turning it into a foodfight.
I have some photos of Spanish ancestors from the early-to-mid-1800s and some pencil sketches/charcoal relief of those from the early 1700s to late 1700s. They all have high foreheads with just one exception and he had a low forehead and big nose. (Gee, if you're paying someone to do your pencil sketch, why not pay him extra to give you a nice high forehead and smaller nose?)
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