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Survival shaped face of human ancestors
Tallahassee, Fla. (UPI) Feb 4, 2009 A U.S. researcher says the facial structure of our early human ancestors appear to have evolved to allow them to eat large, hard nuts to survive. Dennis Slice of Florida State University said the findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, challenge the hypothesis that the facial skeleton of Australopithecus africanus was developed for feeding on small objects. The face of the early human relative, who lived in Africa more than 2 million years ago, had columns of bone positioned along either side of the nasal cavity that acted as struts to reinforce the face, the university said Tuesday in a news release. An international team of researchers found A. africanus might have used bicuspids and a structurally reinforced face to crack open and ingest large, hard nuts and seeds during periods when preferred, softer foods were in short supply. "It is possible that their facial architecture was driven not by their day-to-day activities but by their capacity to survive hard times by switching to what are called 'fallback foods,'" Slice said. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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New York NY (SPX) Feb 04, 2009A new neuroimaging study on stressed-out students suggests that male humans, like male rats, don't do their most agile thinking under stress. The findings, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that 20 male M.D. candidates in the middle of preparing for their board exams had a harder time shifting their attention from one task to another than other healthy young men who were not under the gun. |
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