Skull Lab

Differential survival and reproduction is like natural selection. The organisms who are best
adapted to the environment will reproduce offspring. The differential survival, of the organisms
who are stronger will lead to the reproduction of those organisms. It is like survival of the
fittest. The organisms fit to the environment will survive, where the organisms who are not fit for
the environments, die off.
Heritability and genetic variation
Heritable variation allows for beneficial, negative, and neutral mutations to get filtered during
each generation by natural selection. This weeds out negative mutations, and passes on
positive and neutral ones. Without heritable variation species would quickly fall victim to
parasites who take advantage of identical genetic material in a population and evolution would
not occur.
We propose that modern humans defining characteristics are a large prefrontal cortex, the
absence of a sagittal crest, and a 90 degree foramen magnum. These defining characteristics in
evolution made big steps to get us to where we are today.

We based our evolutionary tree on our class data as well as research. The tree shows a timeline
of where the groups originated, but we have a more specific proposal of which species
branched off from which. Starting from the Ardipithecus group, evolution branched to the
Australopithecus group and the Paranthropus group. The paranthropus group led to the Homo
group including us, while the australopithecus group led to P. Boisei and ended. We think that
the reason for a more prosperous australopithecus group was the absence of a sagittal crest.
When looking at species from close time periods, an obvious difference was a sagittal crest in
the paranthropus group and not in the australopithecus group. The Homo group probably came
from this group because they also dont have a sagittal crest. When thinking of man vs. animal,
an animal is thought to be violent and mindless, while a man is intelligent and sophisticated. The
absence of a sagittal crest makes a species that has a weaker jaw, making it less violent for
hunting. It also leaves room for a larger prefrontal cortex, giving the species more emotion and
decision making skills.