A mind set in stone: fossil traces of human brain evolution – talk by Philipp Gunz, Tuesday, July 5

[Katja Heuer]

Hello,

We would like to invite you to the next talk in our BrainWeb Series on 

A mind set in stone: fossil traces of human brain evolution" by Philipp Gunz, interim director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 

The talk will be on July 5, at 5pm Paris time, and will happen on Crowdcast where you can watch the live-presentation, chat with participants, ask questions, and join the video discussion on screen. 
Please register here https://crowdcast.io/e/a-mind-set-in-stone to join us, and you should even receive an email alert when the talk is about to start.

For more information please visit the BrainWeb , or find the abstract and Philipp's bio copied below for convenience.

We are looking forward to the presentation & discussion next Tuesday.

Best,

Katja & Roberto

& the BrainWeb https://brain-web.github.io

Abstract

"Brains do not fossilise, but as they grow and expand during fetal and infant development, they leave an imprint in the bony braincase. Such imprints of fossilised braincases provide direct evidence of brain evolution, but the underlying biological changes have remained elusive. Combining data from fossil skulls, ancient genomes, brain imaging and gene expression helps shed light on the evolutionary changes shaping the human brain. I will highlight two examples separated by more than 3 million years: the evolution of brain growth in Lucy and her kind, and differences between modern humans and Neanderthals."

Biosketch

Dr. Philipp Gunz is a biological anthropologist who studies the evolution of human development. Philipp obtained his PhD at the University of Vienna (2005), and works as a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is a specialist for the reconstruction of fossil skulls from computed tomographic scans, and the statistical analysis of shape. You can find out more about his research on: https://www.evodevo.de.