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Functional inference in paleoanthropology : theory and practice / David J. Daegling.

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Sharing rich findings from recent decades of research in skeletal biomechanics, Functional Inference in Paleoanthropology examines how bone adapts over the lifespan, what environmental factors influence its quality, and how developmental constraints limit the skeleton's adaptive potential over...

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Full Text (via ProQuest)
Main Author: Daegling, David J., 1960- (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2022]
Subjects:
Paleoanthropology.
Electronic books.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Unresolved problems in human evolution
  • Situating functional morphology in evolutionary biology
  • Defining adaptation : essential or esoteric?
  • Repackaging the enterprise
  • Form versus function : the question of primacy
  • The formalization of structuralism
  • Paleobiology and uniformitarian principles
  • Allometry as explanation
  • Total morphological pattern
  • Developmental perspectives on bone morphology
  • The Mechanostat
  • Mechanobiology
  • Interpreting bone morphology through phenotypic plasticity
  • Teleonomy reexamined
  • Form versus function : philosophically trivial or pragmatically crucial?
  • Approaches to functional inference in paleoanthropology
  • The great escape hatch : more fossils will fix everything
  • Does the general approach matter?
  • Multiscalar approaches to functional inference
  • The comparative calculus
  • Rules of engagements
  • Is process discoverable via pattern?
  • The paradigm method
  • Analogy
  • Phylogenetic brackets
  • Biomechanical reduction
  • Morphogenesis through mechanobiology
  • The Law of the Hammer
  • The relationship of method to theory
  • Bipedality
  • The ecological question
  • The energetics question
  • The precursor question
  • Same fossils, different functions : compromise versus efficiency
  • The pedal rays
  • The innominate
  • Limb proportions
  • The glenoid-bar angle
  • The femoral neck
  • Who does one believe?
  • Hominin dietary adaptations
  • Postcanine megadontia
  • Occlusal morphology and bunodonty
  • Facial skeleton
  • Nonmorphological means of inference
  • Reconciling contradictions
  • A productive role for contingency
  • A structuralist perspective on the early hominid skull
  • The osteocyte perspective on human evolution bone adaptation : the view from the mailroom
  • Testing equifinality
  • Too many degrees of freedom
  • Only people speak, and only people have chins
  • Theoretical morphology of bone growth : shear strain as the architect
  • What do osteocytes think about?
  • Expanding the prescription
  • Teleonomy revisited conjuring human evolution with numbers and skepticism
  • Bad paradigm or bad practice?
  • Lowering expectations now for a more mature science later.

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