An array of early human skulls, culminating in Homo Sapiens. The gene that led to our brains s sudden growth has been found The Washington Post/Getty
How did humans get so smart? A random reshuffle in our ancestor’s genome more than 3 million years ago let our brains grow three times as large.
David Haussler at the University of California, Santa Cruz and his colleagues were comparing brain development in humans and monkeys when they found one key difference. Human brain growth appeared to be driven by a gene called NOTCH2NL that was not found in monkeys.
Further studies…
