一個兩千萬年前的猴子頭骨，揭示了人類大腦的進化過程

What a 20 million-year-old monkey skull reveals about the evolution of human brains

一個兩千萬年前的猴子頭骨，揭示了人類大腦的進化過程

A rare, palm-size, 20 million-year-old fossil skull from an extinct monkey that was discovered high in the Andes Mountains is helping researchers learn more about the evolution of the human brain.

在安第斯山脈高處發(fā)現(xiàn)的一具罕見的、手掌大小、距今2000萬年的猴子頭骨化石，幫助研究人員更多地了解人類大腦的進化過程。

The fossilized skull is the only known specimen of the extinct Chilecebus carrascoensis, a New World monkey that lived in what is now Chile and had a body mass of roughly a pound.

這具頭骨化石是已知的唯一一種已滅絕的卡拉斯科紅毛猴標本。紅毛猴是一種新的世界猴，生活在現(xiàn)在的智利，體重約為1磅。

A study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, led by researchers from Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of California Santa Barbara, suggests that the brain “enlarged repeatedly and independently over the course of anthropoid history and was more complex in some early members [of anthropoid primates] than previously recognized.”

周三，由曼哈頓美國自然歷史博物館、中國科學(xué)院和加州大學(xué)圣巴巴拉分校的研究人員領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的一項發(fā)表在《科學(xué)進展》雜志上的研究表明，“大腦在類人猿的歷史，在一些早期類人猿(類人猿靈長類)成員中，比以前認知的要復(fù)雜得多。”

“Human beings have exceptionally enlarged brains, but we know very little about how far back this key trait started to develop,” said lead author Xijun Ni, a research associate at the museum and a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“人類的大腦特別大，但我們對這一關(guān)鍵特征的發(fā)展歷史知之甚少，”首席作者倪錫軍說，他是博物館的研究助理，也是中國科學(xué)院的研究員。

Xiaocong Guo/Xijun Ni

“This is in part because of the scarcity of well-preserved fossil skulls of much more ancient relatives.”

“這在一定程度上取決于保存完好的古代親屬頭骨化石的匱乏。”

John Flynn, the museum’s Frick curator of fossil mammals, called Chilecebus “one of those rare and truly spectacular fossils, revealing new insights and surprising conclusions every time new analytical methods are applied to studying it.”

博物館的化石哺乳動物弗里克館長約翰·弗林(JohnFlynn)，稱奇萊切布斯為“那些罕見的、真正壯觀的化石之一，每當(dāng)新的分析方法被應(yīng)用于研究它時，都會揭示出新的見解和令人驚訝的結(jié)論。”

The use of high-resolution CT scanning and 3D digital reconstruction of the inside of Chilecebus’ skull gave the research team new understanding of the anatomy of its brain.

科學(xué)家們利用高分辨率的CT掃描和三維數(shù)字重建技術(shù)，對智利人顱骨內(nèi)部進行重建，使研究小組對其大腦的解剖結(jié)構(gòu)有了新的認識。