ZURICH, SWITZERLAND—Previous studies of Neanderthal brain development have suggested that Neanderthal and modern human brains looked similar at birth, but then developed differently. Chirstoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich and his team generated 3-D casts of the brain cases of 15 Neanderthal skulls ranging in age from newborn to adult. The scientists then compared the images of the Neanderthal brains with patterns of brain development in modern human children. New Scientist reports that at birth, Zollikofer found the Neanderthal brains to be longer, wider, and flatter than modern human brains. He claimed that similar to patterns of modern human development, the cerebellum and other regions of the Neanderthal brains grew quickly during childhood. He also argued that this pattern of development suggests that Neanderthals may have had similar cognitive abilities as well. But some are skeptical of Zollikofer’s results, in part because the bones in newborn skulls are fragile and not fully fused, making it hard to produce accurate measurements. “I think [researchers] should not put cognition on the table every time they find a morphological difference between specimens,” commented Emiliano Bruner of the National Research Center on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain. To read more about our extinct cousins, go to "Should We Clone Neanderthals?"
