Hominid palaeobiology: Have studies of comparative development come of age?

✍ Scribed by Wood, Bernard

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 11 KB
• Volume: 99
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-9483
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1096-8644(199601)99:1<9::aid-ajpa2>3.0.co;2-x

✦ Synopsis

It is 70 years since Adolf Schultz urged his colleagues to consider how studies of primate growth and development could help them interpret the course of human evolution. This paper considers the evolutionary context of comparative growth studies. It compares and contrasts aspects of the ontogeny of living modern humans and chimpanzees, and considers whether relatively simple models of heterochronic change can account for the modifications which have taken place during the course of human evolutionary history. o 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc. With these few and scattered observations on the relation of the growth of primates to man's evolution . . . it is hoped to have at least stimulated further investigations and thoughtperhaps criticism-in this promising field. (Schultz, 1924, p. 163)

Thus wrote Adolph Schultz, just over 70 years ago, at the conclusion of a paper entitled "Growth studies on primates bearing on man's evolution.''

The study of human evolution is a threefold process. It involves tracing the events which occurred during hominid phylogeny, the pursuit of information about the context of those events, and the investigation of the processes which helped to shape them. This paper examines the extent to which those who came after Schultz have taken up his challenge to relate the process of development to the events of human evolutionary history. In what ways can development contribute to the study of human evolutionary history? What contribution have studies of comparative development made to our understanding of that history in the seven decades since Schultz's pioneering essay? Has the "promise," which Schultz referred to, been realised?