The discovery of a 54 million year old primate skull looks set to challenge long accepted ideas about why our brains are so large.
By scanning a 54-million-year-old skull roughly the size of a walnut, scientists have created the first virtual 3-D model of an early primate brain, a new study says.
Surprisingly, the model suggests that primates (such as lemurs, monkeys, apes, and humans, among others) might have evolved larger brains as a result of the need to move quickly from tree to tree—not, as commonly assumed, to hunt for fruit or navigate within a single tree
Full article here:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090630-tiny-skull-big-brains.html
I find it mad that this little critter(
Ignacius graybullianus)'s brain is roughly teh size of a
Stegosaurus'.
Photograph by Eric Zamora of the University of Florida
