Many anthropologists sought to differentiate races by physical characteristics, such as skull size.
It also echoes the racist claptrap contained in Samuel George Morton's "Crania Americana" (1839), which tied skull size to intelligence.
Some paleontologists separate giant wombats into two species (D. australis and D. minor) on the basis of differences in skull size.
Cognitive brain activity takes place in cells in thin surface layers of the cerebral cortex, and skull size did not increase as fast as brain complexity did as the species evolved.
He took a series of measurements -- of skull size, for example, and the distance between the ear and chin -- and created a unique code for every suspect whom the police had photographed.
But this whale was much larger than the killer whale, growing to be about 60 feet long based on guesses made from the skull size, about the same as a modern sperm whale.
It could be that the problem with the old sciences was simply that they weren't scientific enough — that they were mostly wishful thinking projected onto dubious data about skull size and the effects of estrogen on the ability to balance a checkbook.
There were also exhibits on pseudo-sciences like phrenology and physiognomy, which posited that trained experts could make broad generalizations about intelligence, criminal proclivity and morality based on physical characteristics like skull size, skull shape and the sizes and relative ratio of body parts.
18th century, the optical illusion depicting two children in a background that forms a skull, size 6 1/2.
Physiological cross-sectional area (PCSA) scales with isometry or slight positive allometry with body mass (β = 0.76, r = 0.92), skull size (β = 0.78, r = 0.94), and jaw length cubed (β = 0.78, r = 0.91).
And the variation in skull size and facial shape is no greater than in other species, including both modern humans or chimps, says Ponce de León especially when the growth of the jaw and face over a lifetime are considered.
