Virtual Anatomy of the Brain and Skull: Reconnecting Palaeoanthropology to Evolutionary Primatology

Homo sapiens is a species within the Order Primates, yet many studies focusing on brain evolution almost exclusively assess the human lineage with only a few species of hominoids or cercopithecoids included. By examining the human lineage in isolation, a very narrow glimpse of brain evolution results with wider evolutionary patterns unknown. The recent revolution of virtual anatomy techniques has allowed the expansion of research in brain evolution to include larger samples combining multiple primate species. The availability of specialised techniques generated from Medical Imaging including Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have become widespread and allow close inspection of neuroanatomy combined with robust statistical methods to properly analyse brain variation within and between species. It is only by examining the human lineage in conjunction with multiple primate lineages that that evolutionary patterns and implications of brain variation be properly understood. Alannah Pearson is a PhD candidate at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at ANU. Her research uses medical imaging and virtual technologies to investigate the variation in skull and brain form of fossil and living primates examining the implications of anatomical constraint and associated modification throughout the fossil record. Alannah completed a Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology at the University of New England, Armidale in 2012 before transferring to the ANU completing Honours research using craniometric datasets investigating intra- and inter-population variation in India. She completed a Master of Philosophy in Biological Anthropology at the Australian National University in 2015 focusing on virtual methods and extant hominoid cranial bone variation examining the consequences for fossil studies combining phylogenetics and shape analysis. In 2015, Alannah held the position of Lecturer in Palaeoanthropology at the University of New England, Armidale before beginning her current doctoral research at the Australian National University in 2016 with the technical expertise and supervision of Dr Emiliano Bruner at CENIEH in Burgos, Spain.