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Ileum, caecum and colon of rabbit, showing Appendix vermiformis on fully functional caecum The human vermiform appendix on the vestigial caecum. The appendix was once believed to be a vestige of a redundant organ that in ancestral species had digestive functions, much as it still does in extant species in which intestinal flora hydrolyze cellulose and similar indigestible plant materials. [10]
The evolutionary history of the human brain shows primarily a gradually bigger brain relative to body size during the evolutionary path from early primates to hominins and finally to Homo sapiens. This trend that has led to the present day human brain size indicates that there has been a 2-3 factor increase in size over the past 3 million years ...
In humans, the vermiform appendix is sometimes called a vestigial structure as it has lost much of its ancestral digestive function.. Vestigiality is the retention, during the process of evolution, of genetically determined structures or attributes that have lost some or all of the ancestral function in a given species. [1]
Paleoneurobiology is the study of brain evolution by analysis of brain endocasts to determine endocranial traits and volumes. Considered a subdivision of neuroscience, paleoneurobiology combines techniques from other fields of study including paleontology and archaeology. It reveals specific insight concerning human evolution.
The hominoids are descendants of a common ancestor.. Homo sapiens is a distinct species of the hominid family of primates, which also includes all the great apes. [1] Over their evolutionary history, humans gradually developed traits such as bipedalism, dexterity, and complex language, [2] as well as interbreeding with other hominins (a tribe of the African hominid subfamily), [3] indicating ...
The human brain is the central organ of the nervous system, and with the spinal cord, comprises the central nervous system. It consists of the cerebrum, the brainstem and the cerebellum. The brain controls most of the activities of the body, processing, integrating, and coordinating the information it receives from the sensory nervous system ...
Early humans were social and initially scavenged, before becoming active hunters. The need to communicate and hunt prey efficiently in a new, fluctuating environment (where the locations of resources need to be memorized and told) may have driven the expansion of the brain from 2 to 0.8 Ma. Evolution of dark skin at about 1.2 Ma. [39]
The expensive tissue hypothesis (ETH) relates brain and gut size in evolution (specifically in human evolution).It suggests that in order for an organism to evolve a large brain without a significant increase in basal metabolic rate (as seen in humans), the organism must use less energy on other expensive tissues; the paper introducing the ETH suggests that in humans, this was achieved by ...