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Computational Paleontology pp 165–178Cite as

Rates of Cranial Evolution in Neandertals and Modern Humans

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Abstract

Rates of phenotypic evolution have been a persistent interest of paleontologists (e.g., Eldredge and Gould 1972; Gingerich 1983; Hunt 2007; Stanley 1985), because of their potential to illuminate the mechanisms that generate or constrain phenotypic diversification within and between evolutionary lineages over long time scales. Field or laboratory studies of phenotypic evolution conducted generation by generation can provide detailed insights into evolutionary mechanisms (e.g., Grant and Grant 2002), but they may give an unrepresentative picture of the relative importance of different evolutionary processes over long time scales, because they typically document, at most, tens of generations. It is possible, perhaps probable, that the tens of generations that were observed in the field or laboratory are unrepresentative of the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of generations of existence of a particular set of taxa. In contrast, phenotypic comparisons between extant taxa whose evolutionary lineages are known to have split from each other many generations in the past, between fossil and extant taxa, or between different fossil taxa can document evolutionary diversification over long time scales, albeit with a much coarser resolution than field or laboratory studies. As such, both kinds of studies provide complementary information about evolutionary pattern and process.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Ashraf Elewa for inviting me to contribute this chapter; Chris Stringer and the Musée de l’Homme (Paris) for the photos for Fig. 9.2; Andy Marshall for help with Fig. 9.3; and Philipp Gunz and Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel for comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Timothy D. Weaver

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  1. Fac. Science, Dept. Geology, Minia University, Minia, 61519, Egypt

    Ashraf M.T. Elewa

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Weaver, T.D. (2011). Rates of Cranial Evolution in Neandertals and Modern Humans. In: Elewa, A. (eds) Computational Paleontology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16271-8_9

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