The evolutionary history of the human face
Creators
- 1. Department of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology, New York University College of Dentistry
- 2. Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London
- 3. Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
- 4. Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, George Washington University
- 5. Paleoanthropology, Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment and DFG Centre for Advanced Studies 'Words, Bones, Genes, Tools'. Eberhard. Karls Universität Tübingen
- 6. Department of Archaeology and Hull York Medical School, University of York
- 7. Department of Biomaterials and Biomimetics, New York University College of Dentistry
- 8. Universidad Complutense de Madrid-Instituto Carlos III (UCMISCIII), Centro de Investigación de la Evolución y Comportamiento Humanos
Description
The face is the most distinctive feature used to identify others. Modern humans have
a short, retracted face beneath a large globular brain case that is distinctively different from that
of our closest living relatives. The face is a skeletal complex formed by 14 individual bones
housing parts of the digestive, respiratory, visual, and olfactory systems. A key to understanding
the origin and evolution of the human face is to analyze the faces of extinct taxa in the hominin
clade over the last 6 million years. Yet as new fossils are recovered, and the number of hominin
species grows, the question of how and when the modern human face originated remains
unclear. By examining key features of the facial skeleton, here we evaluate the evolutionary
history of the modern human face in the context of its development, morphology, and function,
and suggest that its appearance is the result of a combination of biomechanical, physiological
and social influences.
Files
Lacruz et al. 2019_Preprint.pdf
Files
(12.9 MB)
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