240.1 - The Potential and Limitations of Endocasts for Understanding Archosaur Brain Evolution
Monday, April 4, 2022
8:30 AM – 9:00 AM
Room: 105 AB - Pennsylvania Convention Center
Introduction: The use of cranial endocasts to estimate and describe the neuroanatomy of extinct animals has a long history within the field of paleontology, dating back at least to O.C. Marsh’s 1880 original description of the fossil birds Hesperornis and Ichthyornis. New and more accessible imaging technologies have, over the last two decades, facilitated a dramatic increase in the sheer amount and taxonomic breadth of detailed endocranial data. As a result, the inclusion of a cranial endocast is now part of a standard protocol for describing and analyzing well-preserved cranial remains from the fossil record. This trend of empirical discovery brings us to an exciting point in the maturation of paleoneurology—one where a more purely descriptive phase gives way to a period of true integration; a period where fossil endocasts regularly inform both the evolutionary patterns and mechanisms of broad interest to a rapidly expanding neuroscience community. This symposium uses the avian lineage to address a series of questions that are relevant to contemporary paleoneurological studies, such as what are the latest techniques being used to visualize and analyze neuroanatomical data; how does covariation between brain/endocast anatomy and associated sensory systems through ontogenetic time affect our understanding of broader phylogenetic patterns; and what is the relationship between endocast morphology, brain size and other anatomical systems? Through these questions we will explore how endocasts can provide evolutionary context and a more comprehensive understanding to studies of functional neuroanatomy, integrating questions of deep time with those of the broader neuroscience community.
