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Home > The Evolution of the Human Head
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 Five Stars, October 03, 2015
By raquel m. mendoza
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I love how the information is broken down. Very informative!!!
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 Not for the general "just interested" science reader, June 23, 2015
By Tom George
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Reader beware. While I greatly enjoyed Dr. Lieberman's book-- The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease--this volume is for a far more technical audience. Let me give you a sample:
"The prosencephalic signaling center produces signaling factor (Shh and Fgf8) that induce neural crest cells surrounding the forebrain to differentiate into mesenchymal cells that make up the upper third of the face above the stomodeum..."
If that all makes sense to you, then you are probably the right audience. But if not, think twice before investing.
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Five Stars, May 04, 2015
By José Leitão Henriques
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Very good book
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Evolving Head, April 20, 2014
By Edward S Matalka
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Excellent presentation of the science behind the development of that second most important piece of our anatomy - the head!
0 of 1 people found the above review helpful.
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Very dense read, February 09, 2014
By Amateur Scientist and Civil War Buff
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You'll need some training in anatomy and physiology to understand this book. I finally had to put it down for a while and move on to something else. I do, however, heartily recommend his other great work "evolution of the body".
0 of 1 people found the above review helpful.
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The Evolution Of The Human Head, February 01, 2013
By scifi memories (Seminole, Florida)
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The Evolution of the Human Head begins with Daniel E. Lieberman highlighting the movie nonlogic of Planet of the Apes that shows apes functioning in a human manner with ape heads, which I appreciated. Lieberman demonstrates the complexity and evolvability of the head as a structure and emphasizes that the various components interact with and affect each other in development throughout the book. The book covers bone structuring, organs, senses, diet, teeth, and the characteristics of living and fossil primates. Page 40 notes the importance of the gene Runx-2 (also known as Cbfa 1) that regulates osteoblast differentiation in intramembranous bones so that elevated levels of expression cause increased rates of bone production, and the gene's absence leads to a lack of bone formation; page 40 also notes the importance of the Sox9 transcription factor for the differentiation and proliferation of chondrocytes for endochondral bones. The differences in skull development from neonate to adult for the chimpanzee and the modern human are shown in Figure 4.3 on page 105, in Figure 4.7 on page 116, and in Figure 4.9 on page 125, showing the projecting effect of depository growth fields in the chimp's jaws and the nonprojecting effect of resorptive growth fields in the human's upper jaws and face and in the upper lower jaw. On page 215, Lieberman notes his interesting experiment of juvenile mini-pigs running on a treadmill everyday an hour a day for three months had thicker leg bones (which he expected) and thicker cranial vaults (which he did not expect) as a way of explaining the thinning of modern human skulls over the last few thousand years since the origins of agriculture by theorizing that exercise triggers a systemic growth response; my personal experience in running supports the experiment's results as I've concluded that the entire skeletal structure is strengthened from the strong impacts, noticing that even the neck bone feels significantly stronger from regular running. Page 248 notes the limiting effect of the derived, inactivated version of the MYH16 gene that causes smaller weaker muscles in modern humans. On page 350, Figure 9.5 shows the different positions of the foramen magnum for (a) Homo sapiens, (b) Australopithecus africanus, (c) Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and (d) Pan troglodytes. On page 555, Figure 13.7 contrasts a recent gracile modern-human skull (left, a male from Italy) with an older robust Pleistocene skull (right, Zhoukoudian, Upper Cave 101), showing the thicker, larger construction of the Pleistocene skull. On page 565, Figure 13.11 features a thin-plate spline transformation of a Homo erectus cranium (KNM-ER 3733) into a Homo heidelbergensis skull (average of Kabwe and Petralona) with arrows showing the required upward and downward directions of growth. On page 572, Figure 13.14 features a thin-plate spline transformation of a Homo heidelbergensis cranium (average of Kabwe and Petralona) into a Homo neanderthalensis skull (Monte Circeo) with arrows showing the required horizontal directions of growth. On page 575, Figure 13.16 features a thin-plate spline transformation of a Homo heidelbergensis cranium (Kabwe) into a Pleistocene Homo sapiens skull (average of Skhul V and Cro-Magnon I) with arrows showing the required upward and outward directions of growth for the cranium and the required inward contraction of the upper face. Lieberman's research also appears in "Ontogeny, Homology, And Phylogeny In The Hominid Craniofacial Skeleton: The Problem Of The Browridge" on pages 85-122 of Development, Growth and Evolution, Volume 20: Implications for the Study of the Hominid Skeleton (Linnean Society Symposium) and with Brandeis McBratney-Owen in "Postnatal Ontogeny Of Facial Position In Homo sapiens And Pan troglodytes" on pages 45-72 of Patterns of Growth and Development in the Genus Homo (Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology).
5 of 6 people found the above review helpful.
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