Ardipithecus ramidus




















The article that I read for this blog was “The Ardipithecus ramidus Skull and Its Implications for Hominid Origins” written by Gen Suwa, Berhane Asfaw, Reiko T. Kono, Daisuke Kubo, C. Owen Lovejoy, and Tim D. White. This article is about brain size and how the increase in size of the brain and skull evolution is an indicator of Homo sapiens. A larger brain leads to the ability to communicate, create tools, plan, and modify the environment. Mostly the skulls that are found are only partial bones of the crania and hominid skulls are rare in the fossil record. They were able to scan the fragments of the fossils into the computer and view what they saw in person and create it online. An Australopithecus skull measured to be around 400-550 cm and A. ramidus measured to be about 300 to 350 cm cubed, so slightly smaller than the Australopithecus. Data that was used for  A. ramidus reconstruction included upper facial projections, midfacial projection, facial mask index, overlap index, subnasal alveolar prognathism, relative upper facial breadth, relative palate length, and relative bi-glenoid breadth. 

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