Chilean monkey fossil reveals the rapid evolution of the human brain

An analysis of a 20 million-year-old Chilean monkey skull fossil by a Chinese and American team found that the brains of apes in different lineages evolved "in a orderly way", and that only the brain evolution of human branches was leaping.
's study, published in the American journal Science Advances, shows that the enlargement of the human brain is not the result of slow accumulation in evolution, but rather of rapid development in a different evolutionary pattern from other apes since it evolved separately from the great apes 7 million years ago.
the study was conducted
the Chinese Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology and its American counterparts. "In apes of different branch, the evolution of the brain will have the same trend, but the evolution trend of the human branch brain will be significantly different, " Zhai Xijun, a researcher at the institute, told Xinhua. Play a little, if nature is rational, then the human brain must be nearly crazy. "
40 million years ago, broad-nosed monkeys evolved independently from narrow-nosed monkeys. Thus, broad-nosed monkeys are a natural reference for the study of brain evolution in narrow-nosed monkeys, including humans, and Carrasco Chilean monkeys, which once lived in South America, are one of the most critical known reference points in this reference system.
studies have shown that the ancestors of broad-nosed and narrow-nosed monkeys had brains of similar size but different structures. In the evolution process of more than 40 million years, both groups have the tendency of increasing brain capacity, except for the human branch, the increase ratio of the two is very similar, and the convergence has evolved the macro-features such as the shrinking of the olfactory ball and the increase of the trench back.
researchers say the increase in brain capacity since the evolution of the human branch separately from the great apes is completely different from the increase in the proportion of other apes. Humans have more than three times the relative brain capacity of apes relative to their own weight and the removal of evolutionary accumulation. (Source: Xinhua News Agency Zhou zhou)
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