In 1925, Raymond Arthur Dart published his description and interpretations of the ‘Taung Child’ in the journal Nature, including a description of the natural brain endocast associated with the face and mandible. Details preserved in the endocast of the Taung Child have opened critical questions and debates about how the human brain evolved, and how to identify and study evidence of brain changes from fossil hominin crania. In this paper, we review and synthesise methodological innovations (how do we study fossil hominin brains?) and critical conceptual shifts (how did the hominin brain evolve?) triggered by the discovery of the Taung Child. In particular, we detail the impact of the study of the well-preserved crania and natural endocasts from the southern African hominin-bearing sites on our understanding of brain evolution and the integration of newly developed analytical tools into research in palaeoneurology (e.g. imaging techniques, 3D modelling). Additionally, we examine how the use of digital replicas of fossil hominin endocasts and the need to study extant human brains to form a comparative platform might raise questions about research practices (e.g. study and exhibition of fossil and extant human brains) and management of such invaluable heritage resources (e.g. data sharing). We finally consider how our view of human brain evolution, and in particular the putative uniqueness of the hominin brain, has changed over the last century.
This manuscript introduces trident, an R package for performing dental microwear texture analysis and subsequently classifying variables based on their ability to separate discrete categories. Dental microwear textures reflect the physical properties of the food, the feeding ecology of a given species, and niche partitioning when considering multi-specific communities. The trident package comes with independent functions and a user interface, trident, enabling easy and fast proficiency. It can import .SUR files, then remove aberrant peaks and possibly polynomial surfaces. Next, it can measure up to 24 texture parameters and their statistics of heterogeneity, generating 384 variables. It also ranks any number of variables using five different methods, displays the results in multivariate analyses, and exports the results into R, providing access to its large asset of libraries. We then present these features in three case studies, showing how trident helps answer questions commonly investigated by paleontologists and archaeologists. In the first case study, we separate four groups of domestic pigs based on their dietary composition. In the second case study, we identify microwear texture patterns in a large database of 15 primate species and relate these patterns to biomechanical and ecological factors. The third case study investigates the dental microwear textures of four extant ruminants to infer the diet of an extinct antelope from the Pleistocene of Greece. These case studies show how trident can leverage dental microwear texture analysis results.
The Paleogene fossil record is poorly known in Thailand with only two fossil assemblages of late Eocene and late Oligocene ages. We report here dental remains of two distinct anthracotheres from the new locality of Khian Sa in peninsular Thailand. One form, Oligokeryx khiansaensis, gen. et sp. nov., is attributed to a small Microbunodontinae and the other one very likely belongs to a larger anthracotheriine. The tooth morphology of the new microbunodontine indicates that it belongs to a derived taxon close to the late Eocene Geniokeryx thailandicus and suggests an early Oligocene age for Khian Sa. Although very limited in diversity, the anthracotheres from Khian Sa extend the fossil record of the Microbunodontinae and they document the first occurrence of the family in the Oligocene of Thailand and expand the evolutionary history of Oligocene mammal communities in Southeast Asia.
Fossil endocasts record features of brains from the past: size, shape, vasculature, and gyrification. These data, alongside experimental and comparative evidence, are needed to resolve questions about brain energetics, cognitive specializations, and developmental plasticity. Through the application of interdisciplinary techniques to the fossil record, paleoneurology has been leading major innovations. Neuroimaging is shedding light on fossil brain organization and behaviors. Inferences about the development and physiology of the brains of extinct species can be experimentally investigated through brain organoids and transgenic models based on ancient DNA. Phylogenetic comparative methods integrate data across species and associate genotypes to phenotypes, and brains to behaviors. Meanwhile, fossil and archeological discoveries continuously contribute new knowledge. Through cooperation, the scientific community can accelerate knowledge acquisition. Sharing digitized museum collections improves the availability of rare fossils and artifacts. Comparative neuroanatomical data are available through online databases, along with tools for their measurement and analysis. In the context of these advances, the paleoneurological record provides ample opportunity for future research. Biomedical and ecological sciences can benefit from paleoneurology’s approach to understanding the mind as well as its novel research pipelines that establish connections between neuroanatomy, genes and behavior.
AbstractNOW (New and Old Worlds) is a global database of fossil mammal occurrences, currently containing around 68,000 locality-species entries. The database spans the last 66 million years, with its primary focus on the last 23 million years. Whereas the database contains records from all continents, the main focus and coverage of the database historically has been on Eurasia. The database includes primarily, but not exclusively, terrestrial mammals. It covers a large part of the currently known mammalian fossil record, focusing on classical and actively researched fossil localities. The database is managed in collaboration with an international advisory board of experts. Rather than a static archive, it emphasizes the continuous integration of new knowledge of the community, data curation, and consistency of scientific interpretations. The database records species occurrences at localities worldwide, as well as ecological characteristics of fossil species, geological contexts of localities and more. The NOW database is primarily used for two purposes: (1) queries about occurrences of particular taxa, their characteristics and properties of localities in the spirit of an encyclopedia; and (2) large scale research and quantitative analyses of evolutionary processes, patterns, reconstructing past environments, as well as interpreting evolutionary contexts. The data are fully open, no logging in or community membership is necessary for using the data for any purpose.
