"Human skull evolved along with two-legged walking, " Topic

"Compared with other primates, the large hole at the base of the human skull where the spinal cord passes through, known as the foramen magnum, is shifted forward. While many scientists generally attribute this shift to the evolution of bipedalism and the need to balance the head directly atop the spine, others have been critical of the proposed link. Validating this connection provides another tool for researchers to determine whether a fossil hominid walked upright on two feet like humans or on four limbs like modern great apes.

Controversy has centered on the association between a forward-shifted foramen magnum and bipedalism since 1925, when Raymond Dart discussed it in his description of "Taung child," a 2.8 million-year-old fossil skull of the extinct South African species Australopithecus africanus. A study published last year by Aidan Ruth and colleagues continued to stir up the controversy when they offered additional criticisms of the idea.

However, in a study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, UT Austin anthropology alumna Gabrielle Russo, now an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, and UT Austin anthropologist Chris Kirk built on their own prior research to show that a forward-shifted foramen magnum is found not just in humans and their bipedal fossil relatives, but is a shared feature of bipedal mammals more generally…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Some other interesting background:

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Is that why two-legged dinosaurs and birds were always so intelligent? :)

Dan

Were they?

An impressive civilization. Well, until the rock hit and the talking monkeys took over!

Dan

I know miniature companies that solidly reject the notion that the neck in humans is a vertical affair and prefer the head to be fixed to the torso along a horizontal axis, aka the Quasimodo school of figure making.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand