The speed of evolution
Evolutionary pressures might work a lot faster than I’d have thought:
Researchers have found that the shape of the human skull has changed significantly over the past 650 years.
[...]
The two principal differences discovered were that our ancestors had more prominent features, but their cranial vault — the distance measured from the eyes to the top of the skull — was smaller.
Dr Peter Rock, lead author of the study and director of orthodontistry at Birmingham University, told the BBC News website: “The astonishing finding is the increased cranial vault heights.
“The increase is very considerable. For example, the vault height of the plague skulls were 80mm, and the modern ones were 95mm — that’s in the order of 20% bigger, which is really rather a lot.”
HT: Glenn Reynolds
september 9, 2007 kl. 5:37 pm
Could the difference be explained by better nutrition or the particular genetic cross section of the plague skulls?
september 9, 2007 kl. 7:31 pm
Don’t ask me, ask mr. Rock…
If you want my opinion, I’d say yes, there might be ie. important environmental factors involved that have little to do with evolution, sure. I did use the wording “might work faster” in my post.
Of course we need more data, complementary hypotheses that hold as well, ect., ect… in order to become (more) certain that this finding is not more or less irrelevant from an evolutionary biological perspective.
But it’s still an interesting finding.