This book discusses how and why animals evolved into particular shapes. The book identifies the physical laws which decide over the evolutionary (selective) value of body shape and morphological characters. Comparing the mechanical necessities with morphological details, the author attempts to understand how evolution works, and which sorts of limitations are set by selection. The book explains morphological traits in more biomechanical detail without getting lost in physics, or in methods. Most emphasis is placed on the proximate question, namely the identification of the mechanical stresses which must be sustained by the respective body parts, when they move the body or its parts against resistance. In the first part of the book the focus is on ‘primitive’ animals and later on the emphasis shifts to highly specialized mammals. Readers will learn more about living and fossil animals. A section of the book is dedicated to human evolution but not to produce another evolutionary tree, nor to refine a former one, but to contribute to answering the question: “WHY early humans have developed their particular body shape".
The hand commonly is considered to have exerted great influence on the evolution of typically human features, like upright posture, stereoscopic vision, "manipulative" handling of parts of the environment. The hands of the other primates are not less closely related to the necessities of life than in humans. But beyond this general statement, only few satisfying and precise analyses of their functions exist. Most considerations begin and end up with Napier's discrimination and definition of power grip and precision grip - which has turned out to be very useful in surgery - and the restating of man's distinctiveness. The characteristic features of the human hand are to a large extent shared by the hands of other primates, and therefore it seems logical to approach the human hand by looking into the details of hand function and hand morphology in non-human primates. This book presents a well-integrated series of articles which deepen our knowledge regarding the problems mentioned above.
This book discusses how and why animals evolved into particular shapes. The book identifies the physical laws which decide over the evolutionary (selective) value of body shape and morphological characters. Comparing the mechanical necessities with morphological details, the author attempts to understand how evolution works, and which sorts of limitations are set by selection. The book explains morphological traits in more biomechanical detail without getting lost in physics, or in methods. Most emphasis is placed on the proximate question, namely the identification of the mechanical stresses which must be sustained by the respective body parts, when they move the body or its parts against resistance. In the first part of the book the focus is on ‘primitive’ animals and later on the emphasis shifts to highly specialized mammals. Readers will learn more about living and fossil animals. A section of the book is dedicated to human evolution but not to produce another evolutionary tree, nor to refine a former one, but to contribute to answering the question: “WHY early humans have developed their particular body shape".
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