Hi there!

Good Evening, everyone!

My name is Perla Torres and I’m a first year college student with intentions of studying biological anthropology. Currently my stance on a future career choice would be starting with medical school, and I felt that physical anthropology would be a perfect fit since I’ve always been interested in the humanities as well as biology and I wanted to combine both somehow.  I was not aware that most sophmores end up taking Anthro 249, but nevertheless I’m taking Anthro 249 because the topic of the class truly interested me. I think that learning the evolutionary aspect to medicine will help my understanding of health and how it has affected people and perhaps it will help me make better decisions of my own choices, such as not using as much hand sanitizer to increase my exposure and ultimately build up some immunity to bacteria.

Three blogs in particular that I found interesting include: 

• Coughs Fool Patients into Unnecessary Requests for Antibiotics

• Mental Disorders And Evolution: What Would Darwin Say About Schizophrenia?

• Bipedalism, Birth and Brain Evolution
• This article in particular struck me as the topic that stood out the most to me, due to my first reading of our textbook “Evolutionary Medicine”. When I first viewed the diagrams of the pelvic openings, I didn't actually realize what they were speaking of until I read the section and I was so mind blown. I would have never put it together that bipedalism could alter birth and ultimately the way humans develop. Something that I find interesting is how the altering of the wide birth passage and bipedalism were independent evolutionary processes. Does this mean that the early anatomically modern humans had smaller brains/bigger skulls in comparison to the modern homo sapien? I feel like this is something I’d like to learn more in the future.

Something that caught my eye:

 “In humans, the anterior fontanelle remains open for the first few years of life, allowing for the massive increase in brain size, which occurs largely during early life. The opening gets gradually smaller as new bone is laid down, and is completely closed by about two years of age, at which time the frontal bones have fused to form a structure called the metopic suture.”

 No wonder that one important thing you should know about holding babies is to be careful with their sensitive heads, their skulls are still not completely intact. 

It'll be a pleasure getting to know you all!