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The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism
Functional morphology of the atlas reflects multiple aspects of an organism’s biology. More specifically, its shape indicates patterns of head mobility, while the size of its vascular foramina reflects blood flow to the brain. Anatomy and function of the early hominin atlas, and thus, its evolutiona...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32179760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60837-2 |
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author | Beaudet, Amélie Clarke, Ronald J. Heaton, Jason L. Pickering, Travis R. Carlson, Kristian J. Crompton, Robin H. Jashashvili, Tea Bruxelles, Laurent Jakata, Kudakwashe Bam, Lunga Van Hoorebeke, Luc Kuman, Kathleen Stratford, Dominic |
author_facet | Beaudet, Amélie Clarke, Ronald J. Heaton, Jason L. Pickering, Travis R. Carlson, Kristian J. Crompton, Robin H. Jashashvili, Tea Bruxelles, Laurent Jakata, Kudakwashe Bam, Lunga Van Hoorebeke, Luc Kuman, Kathleen Stratford, Dominic |
author_sort | Beaudet, Amélie |
collection | PubMed |
description | Functional morphology of the atlas reflects multiple aspects of an organism’s biology. More specifically, its shape indicates patterns of head mobility, while the size of its vascular foramina reflects blood flow to the brain. Anatomy and function of the early hominin atlas, and thus, its evolutionary history, are poorly documented because of a paucity of fossilized material. Meticulous excavation, cleaning and high-resolution micro-CT scanning of the StW 573 (‘Little Foot’) skull has revealed the most complete early hominin atlas yet found, having been cemented by breccia in its displaced and flipped over position on the cranial base anterolateral to the foramen magnum. Description and landmark-free morphometric analyses of the StW 573 atlas, along with other less complete hominin atlases from Sterkfontein (StW 679) and Hadar (AL 333-83), confirm the presence of an arboreal component in the positional repertoire of Australopithecus. Finally, assessment of the cross-sectional areas of the transverse foramina of the atlas and the left carotid canal in StW 573 further suggests there may have been lower metabolic costs for cerebral tissues in this hominin than have been attributed to extant humans and may support the idea that blood perfusion of these tissues increased over the course of hominin evolution. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7075956 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-70759562020-03-23 The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism Beaudet, Amélie Clarke, Ronald J. Heaton, Jason L. Pickering, Travis R. Carlson, Kristian J. Crompton, Robin H. Jashashvili, Tea Bruxelles, Laurent Jakata, Kudakwashe Bam, Lunga Van Hoorebeke, Luc Kuman, Kathleen Stratford, Dominic Sci Rep Article Functional morphology of the atlas reflects multiple aspects of an organism’s biology. More specifically, its shape indicates patterns of head mobility, while the size of its vascular foramina reflects blood flow to the brain. Anatomy and function of the early hominin atlas, and thus, its evolutionary history, are poorly documented because of a paucity of fossilized material. Meticulous excavation, cleaning and high-resolution micro-CT scanning of the StW 573 (‘Little Foot’) skull has revealed the most complete early hominin atlas yet found, having been cemented by breccia in its displaced and flipped over position on the cranial base anterolateral to the foramen magnum. Description and landmark-free morphometric analyses of the StW 573 atlas, along with other less complete hominin atlases from Sterkfontein (StW 679) and Hadar (AL 333-83), confirm the presence of an arboreal component in the positional repertoire of Australopithecus. Finally, assessment of the cross-sectional areas of the transverse foramina of the atlas and the left carotid canal in StW 573 further suggests there may have been lower metabolic costs for cerebral tissues in this hominin than have been attributed to extant humans and may support the idea that blood perfusion of these tissues increased over the course of hominin evolution. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7075956/ /pubmed/32179760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60837-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Beaudet, Amélie Clarke, Ronald J. Heaton, Jason L. Pickering, Travis R. Carlson, Kristian J. Crompton, Robin H. Jashashvili, Tea Bruxelles, Laurent Jakata, Kudakwashe Bam, Lunga Van Hoorebeke, Luc Kuman, Kathleen Stratford, Dominic The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism |
title | The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism |
title_full | The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism |
title_fullStr | The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism |
title_full_unstemmed | The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism |
title_short | The atlas of StW 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism |
title_sort | atlas of stw 573 and the late emergence of human-like head mobility and brain metabolism |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32179760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60837-2 |
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