MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mike Morgan, MD R2 Division of Emergency Medicine University of Utah School of Medicine MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Morgan: Our paper is a review of the literature. So we do not present original data or findings. What we do is present new ideas about what drove the evolution of the hominin (bipedal ape) face. Studies of injuries resulting from fights show that when modern humans fight the face is the primary target. The bones of the face that suffer the highest rates of fracture from fights are the bones that show the greatest increase in robusticity during the evolution of early bipedal apes, the australopiths. These are also the bones that show the greatest difference between women and men in both australopiths and modern humans. What needs to be explained about facial differences in women and men is that in both apes and humans, males are much more violent than females and most male violence is directed at other males. Because males are the primary target of violence, one would expect more protective buttressing in males and that is what we find.   (more…)