Exploring the relationship between soft and hard tissues: The example of vertebral arteries and transverse foramina

Abstract

Even though the extant human brain only accounts for 2.5% of the body's weight, it receives one-sixth of the cardiac output and requires 20%-25% of the basal metabolic rate (Hublin et al., 2015;Moore et al., 2018). Because of the central role of the brain in the emergence of modern human biology and behavior, the question of how to "feed" an evolving brain and how the vascular and metabolic system of the hominin brain changed through time, are of particular interest (Lieberman, 2011). Unfortunately, since soft tissues