Technology in evolution research

Introduction

The evolution research start just with observation, because of a theory based on a world wide travel that reveals the huge diversity of species and sub-species between different places, and made them question “why so much diversity?” and they develop a theory, but this theory, as I already said, it was based just in observation, and because of that a lot of people on that days doesn’t think it was possible that all of us “came” from the same unique first organism.

Now, the progress of this research depends a lot of technology, for example, they need to determinate de age of the archaeological founds to know the relation with it lost environment.

Radioactivity on evolution research

To determinate de age of fossils or other archaeological discoveries, they use the half life of some radioactive isotopes to calculate how old is that they found. The most common is C14, but it got a limit of years, so the oldest things must be determinate with other elements. The last research in this area says that this techniques are not enough to have an exactly data.

Some computer software are used to confirm hypothesis

There are some computer software that are really useful to compare parts of some bones like the skull comparison that it was used to confirm the neoteny hypothesis, where some investigators use some points of the skull of human, juvenile and adult Pan (chimpanzee), and other primates and using a software they saw that the human skull it seems a lot to the juvenile Pan, but not with the adult.

Body reconstruction with parts

Most of times the archaeologist can’t found the full body, and they must use the parts that they found to made a reconstruction and have a near image of what they’re looking for. In this case they use computers, draw techniques, and other things to make sure that the reconstruction is similar and credible.

Colclusions

The contribution of physical therapist on evolution research

The physical therapist has a long knowledge of the biomechanics and the anatomy. So when the investigators are trying to know about the habits and the environment of a civilization, we as physical therapist are really useful, because we know about the changes on the musculoskeletal system because of different uses or activities, and the changes on the bone when the muscles are overused. As an example, the bone remains of Chonos got the sites of insertion of lattisumus dorsi longer than the norm, that’s because they live on canoes and need to use this muscles all day.