Inside the minds of our ancestors: what do fossil skulls reveal?

Conference organized by Comédie des Neurones.

By Victor Giolland (National Museum of Natural History, Paris).

The brain does not fossilize, but casting the inside of the skull—the endocranium—allows scientists to study its volume, shape, and even the size of its different lobes. It is an object of study traditionally used to infer behavior in many extinct species, from mammals to dinosaurs, but it has certain limitations. What can we really observe on an endocranium? To what extent can we interpret the relationship between form and function? What does this reveal about the behavior of our ancestors? We are attempting to answer all these questions as part of the ANR PaleoBRAIN project. Thanks to technical advances in 3D imaging, it has been possible to establish correspondences between the endocranium and the brain in modern humans. This original approach opens up new perspectives for interpreting neurological information from fossil material. The imprint of cerebral sulci, the complexity of the diploic network, and laterality are all clues that bring us closer to a better understanding of the cognition of extinct hominins. This conference will review the latest advances in this field at the crossroads between paleoanthropology and neuroscience.