The Evolutionary Development of the Human Brain

Speaker: Shawn Hurst

Since the discovery of the fossil Taung child a century ago, human brain evolution has been a contentious subject. Recently however much progress has been made, with an increased understanding of how changes in developmental timing have led from an ancestral chimpanzee-like brain to our modern human one. In this talk I will discuss the history of the field and what these recent findings suggest about what it means to be human.

Shawn Hurst is an Assistant Professor at the University of Indianapolis and an expert on the evolution and development of the brain and its behavior in humans and apes. His work has been published in journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and the Journal of Human Evolution, and he has been interviewed by Science, Science News, New Scientist, and Forbes.com.

Sponsored by John Langdon