Insights into Brain Development from Fossil Teeth and Early Childhood Studies.
A mathematical model using the relative lengths of molar teeth has been developed by paleoanthropologists to track evolutionary changes in prenatal growth rates in the fossil record. The model suggests that pregnancy and prenatal growth became more humanlike than chimplike almost 1 million years ago. The rate of prenatal growth directly relates to how big an adult brain grows, and understanding more about when prenatal growth and pregnancy became humanlike reveals information about when and how our brains did too. Teeth can even indirectly hint at the emergence of human consciousness via evolving brain size.