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I had an opportunity to handle Neandertal and Homo Sapiens skulls recently. It made me wonder what the cross section of that incredibly long Neandertal skull is compared to H. sapiens.

If the difference is as large as what it looks like, my take on it is that they died in childbirth. Unless they had an extremely large pelvic opening (which I would also like to check out), giving birth would have been very deadly indeed.

That is the way to approach the study: handle the casts of the originals.

You can learn a lot about the theory of evolution from actually looking at the data. And there are thousands of casts available!

I fondled the bones for about six years in grad school, and learned a great deal. Line up the best crania on the desk and sort them by eye and see what you get. Just look at the gross features, and put them in whatever order seems appropriate.

I bet you will order them in the same way the rest of the experts do. Its not rocket science--you really can see it for yourself if you just look at the casts.

I don't recall a Neanderthal pelvis from when I studied. I do recall great specimens of chimp, Australopithecus, and modern human. Folks who are asked to make two groups out of these almost always put Australopithecus and modern human together based on shape, rather than Australopithecus and chimp together based on size). It is just the natural thing to do.

And that is what most of the study of fossil man is--connecting like traits. And, you know, it works!

I bet you will order them in the same way the rest of the experts do. Its not rocket science--you really can see it for yourself if you just look at the casts.

It was a pretty awesome class day. We had A. pith, A. robustus, H. habilis, erectus, neandertal, sapien, and sapien sapien. The last two were real, so extreme care was necessary. Also casts of a chimp, and a gorilla. I couldn't wait until class ended so I could walk up to the prof with my hands out like I was holding an imaginary vase, saying "can I, um..." :-)

You're absolutely right. It was obvious who belonged to whom. Even Taung Baby was clearly one of us, and no chimp. I'd only ever seen pictures. Seeing the real thing was awesome.

That gorilla skull... whoa... that critter could be one mean mutha if it wanted to be. I never really paid any attention to their fangs (or the structures for the muscles that drive them) before. That skull was nightmare stuff.