ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Brain enlargement and dental reduction were not linked in hominin evolution.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Craniofacial size in individuals with supernumerary teeth: A multicenter geometric morphometric study.BMC oral health · 2026Article
- Reading hominin life history in fossil bones and teeth: methods to test hypotheses regarding its evolution.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Burn Selection: How Fire Injury Shaped Human Evolution.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Accelerated evolution increased craniofacial divergence between humans and great apes.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Cooperative Breeding as a Likely Early Catalyst of Human Evolution.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- Dentition of the Mugharet El'Aliya Fossil Human Maxilla, Morocco.American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Article
- The evolution of human altriciality and brain development in comparative context.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- From fossils to mind.Communications biology · 2023Review
- Article
- Resolving the "muddle in the middle": The case for Homo bodoensis sp. nov.Evolutionary anthropology · 2022Article
- Divergence-time estimates for hominins provide insight into encephalization and body mass trends in human evolution.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Article
- Heterogeneous relationships between rates of speciation and body size evolution across vertebrate clades.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Article
- Dental evolutionary rates and its implications for the Neanderthal-modern human divergence.Science advances · 2019Article
- Comparative Principles for Next-Generation Neuroscience.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2019Article
- On the relationship between maxillary molar root shape and jaw kinematics inRoyal Society open science · 2018Article
- Endocast morphology ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Article
- Meat and Nicotinamide: A Causal Role in Human Evolution, History, and Demographics.International journal of tryptophan research : IJTR · 2017Review
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5 authors.
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Abstract
The large brain and small postcanine teeth of modern humans are among our most distinctive features, and trends in their evolution are well studied within the hominin clade. Classic accounts hypothesize that larger brains and smaller teeth coevolved because behavioral changes associated with increased brain size allowed a subsequent dental reduction. However, recent studies have found mismatches between trends in brain enlargement and posterior tooth size reduction in some hominin species. We use a multiple-variance Brownian motion approach in association with evolutionary simulations to measure the tempo and mode of the evolution of endocranial and dental size and shape within the hominin clade. We show that hominin postcanine teeth have evolved at a relatively consistent neutral rate, whereas brain size evolved at comparatively more heterogeneous rates that cannot be explained by a neutral model, with rapid pulses in the branches leading to later Homo species. Brain reorganization shows evidence of elevated rates only much later in hominin evolution, suggesting that fast-evolving traits such as the acquisition of a globular shape may be the result of direct or indirect selection for functional or structural traits typical of modern humans.
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