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0:00
My name is Tim Bromage of the New York University College of Dentistry.
In this presentation, I provide further topics within
the general theme of hard tissue biology in human health and evolution.
0:16
There are several aspects of hard tissue biology within the health sciences
that have been the explicit focus of attention in human evolutionary biology.
These include enamel in tooth biology,
bone biology, and as the focus in this presentation,
applications in both the medical and human evolutionary sciences
that concern craniofacial biology,
and life history and chronobiology.
0:45
The craniofacial skeletal system changes over
biological time and growth, through the actions of flows.
The flows are signals such as are manifest by enlarging
soft tissues that trigger coordinated bone
forming and bone resorbing activities during growth.
The facial skeleton is thus
a present yet transient memory of the history of changing flows within the system.
This perspective is one familiar to analyses of complex systems,
characterized as they are by interconnected and interdependent features belonging to
a system that adapts to changing circumstances and that has a function or purpose.
1:31
The human fossil record is largely made up of parts of the craniofacial skeleton.
There are sufficient numbers of juvenile early human specimens to reconstruct
bone growth and remodeling patterns among members of Australopithecus in turquoise,
Paranthropus in yellow, and Homo in purple.
