Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution

Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution encapsulates the current state of evolutionary developmental anthropology. This emerging scientific field applies tools and approaches from modern developmental biology to understand the role of genetic and developmental processes in driving morphological and cognitive evolution in humans, non-human primates and in the laboratory organisms used to model these changes. 

Featuring contributions from well-established pioneers and emerging leaders, this volume is designed to build research momentum and catalyze future innovation in this burgeoning field. The book’s broad research scope encompasses soft and hard tissues of the head and body, including the skeleton, special senses and the brain. 

Developmental Approaches to Human Evolution is an invaluable resource on the mechanisms of primate and vertebrate evolution for scholars across a wide array of intersecting disciplines, including primatology, paleoanthropology, vertebrate morphology, evolutionary developmental biology and health sciences.

Julia Boughner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology at the University of Saskatchewan. Her laboratory researches dental and jaw development in great apes, the genetic underpinnings of coordinated jaw and tooth morphogenesis and evolution in mammals, and early-acting risk factors for third molar impaction in humans. 

Campbell Rolian is Assistant Professor in anatomy in the Department of Comparative Biology and Experimental Medicine in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary. His current work centers around an artificial selection experiment in mice, which will allow him to study developmental, evolutionary and functional aspects of skeletal variation in the vertebrate limb skeleton.