wildcat2030: Male faces ‘buttressed against punches’ by...

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Male faces ‘buttressed against punches’ by evolution

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A new theory suggests that our male ancestors evolved beefy facial features as a defence against fist fights. The bones most commonly broken in human punch-ups also gained the most strength in early “hominin” evolution. They are also the bones that show most divergence between males and females. The paper, in the journal Biological Reviews, argues that the reinforcements evolved amid fighting over females and resources, suggesting that violence drove key evolutionary changes. Fossil records show that the australopiths, immediate predecessors of the human genus Homo, had strikingly robust facial For many years, this extra strength was seen as an adaptation to a tough diet including nuts, seeds and grasses. But more recent findings, examining the wear pattern and carbon isotopes in australopith teeth, have cast some doubt on this “feeding hypothesis”. “In fact, [the australopith] boisei, the ‘nutcracker man’, was probably eating fruit,” said Prof David Carrier, the new theory’s lead author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah. (via BBC News - Male faces ‘buttressed against punches’ by evolution)

via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1hzbQwX June 09, 2014 at 02:01PM