Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution

About this book

Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution encapsulates the current state of evolutionary developmental anthropology. This emerging scientific field applies tools and approaches from modern developmental biology to understand the role of genetic and developmental processes in driving morphological and cognitive evolution in humans, non-human primates and in the laboratory organisms used to model these changes.

Featuring contributions from well-established pioneers and emerging leaders, this volume is designed to build research momentum and catalyze future innovation in this burgeoning field. Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution's broad research scope encompasses soft and hard tissues of the head and body, including the skeleton, special senses and the brain.

Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution is an invaluable resource on the mechanisms of primate and vertebrate evolution for scholars across a wide array of intersecting disciplines, including primatology, paleoanthropology, vertebrate morphology, evolutionary developmental biology and health sciences.

Contents

Contributors   vii
Foreword: Humans from Embryos   ix

1 Introduction to Evo-Devo-Anthro / Campbell Rolian and Julia C. Boughner   1
2 Chondrocranial Growth, Developmental Integration and Evolvability in the Human Skull / Neus Martínez-Abadías, Mireia Esparza, Torstein Sjøvold and Benedikt Hallgrímsson   17
3 The Tooth of the Matter: The Evo-Devo of Coordinated Phenotypic Change / Julia C. Boughner   35
4 Genetic Regulation of Amelogenesis and Implications for Hominin Ancestors / Rodrigo S. Lacruz   61
5 Evo-Devo Sheds Light on Mechanisms of Human Evolution: Limb Proportions and Penile Spines / Philip L. Reno   77
6 Out on a Limb: Development and the Evolution of the Human Appendicular Skeleton / Nathan M. Young and Terence D. Capellini   101
7 Tinkering with Growth Plates: A Developmental Simulation of Limb Bone Evolution in Hominoids / Campbell Rolian   139
8 Origin, Development, and Evolution of Primate Muscles, with Notes on Human Anatomical Variations and Anomalies / Rui Diogo and Bernard Wood   167
9 The Evolutionary Biology of Human Neurodevelopment: Evo-Neuro-Devo Comes of Age / Bernard Crespi and Emma Leach   205
10 Evolving the Developing Cortex: Conserved Gradients of Neurogenesis Scale and Channel New Functions in Primates / Christine J. Charvet and Barbara L. Finlay   231
11 Growing Up Fast, Maturing Slowly: The Evolution of a Uniquely Modern Human Pattern of Brain Development / Philipp Gunz   261
12 FOXP2 and the Genetic and Developmental Basis of Human Language / Carles Lalueza-Fox   285
13 Assembly Instructions Included / Kenneth Weiss and Anne Buchanan   297

Index  317

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Biography

Julia Boughner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology at the University of Saskatchewan. Her laboratory researches dental and jaw development in great apes, the genetic underpinnings of coordinated jaw and tooth morphogenesis and evolution in mammals, and early-acting risk factors for third molar impaction in humans.

Campbell Rolian is Assistant Professor in anatomy in the Department of Comparative Biology and Experimental Medicine in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary. His current work centers around an artificial selection experiment in mice, which will allow him to study developmental, evolutionary and functional aspects of skeletal variation in the vertebrate limb skeleton.