Cracking the Skull

Why do animals have different skull shapes? The main jobs of the skull are to process food during feeding, and to house and protect the brain and sense organs. These functions are same across most animals, and yet we see wide variation in the shape of the skull across the vertebrates (back-boned animals), from the long, thin skulls of anteaters, to domed, flat-faced humans. In this talk, I will introduce some of the weird and wonderful skulls found in the animal kingdom and examine how such a diversity of shape has evolved.

We have peculiar heads, with flat faces tucked under a globular braincase. It was not always like that, some of our ancestors were more like apes and others possessed very large noses, browridges and cheekbones. How do we make sense of these variations? I will consider one determinant of skull form, mechanical loading, and how the interaction between form and function can be investigated using virtual methods to simulate otherwise impossible experiments.