Fossilized teeth shed light on human brain evolution

+ age makes California shooters outliers; untangling COVID-19 death counts US Edition - Today's top story: Fossil teeth reveal how brains developed in utero over millions of years of human evolution – new research [View in browser]( US Edition | 25 January 2023 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( Scientists can learn a lot about human evolution from the fossil record. But some things they’re very interested in don’t fossilize – like pregnancy and prenatal growth rates. Paleoanthropologist Tesla Monson and her colleagues knew that teeth definitely do show up in the fossil record, and they start developing about halfway through gestation. All of which gave them an idea: Could they use the size of a species’ molars as a proxy for how quickly it grew in utero? After measuring the teeth of 608 primates, they were able to devise an equation that lets them plug in the dimensions of a few fossilized hominid teeth and come out with that species’ prenatal growth rate. What’s really exciting is what that then reveals about brain size – and even potentially the [emergence of human consciousness](. Also today: - [The problem with Atlanta's "green gentrification"]( - [Standardized college tests under fire]( - [“The Whale” as a body horror film]( Maggie Villiger Senior Science + Technology Editor Any hominid fossil find with molar teeth can be plugged into a new equation that reveals its species’ prenatal growth rate. Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images [Fossil teeth reveal how brains developed in utero over millions of years of human evolution – new research]( Tesla Monson, Western Washington University Using a new equation based on today’s primates, scientists can take a few molar teeth from an extinct fossil species and reconstruct exactly how fast their offspring grew during gestation. 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