Foramen Magnum - Importance

Importance

In humans, the foramen magnum is farther underneath the head than in great apes. Thus, in humans, the neck muscles (including the occipitofrontalis muscle) do not need to be as robust in order to hold the head upright. Comparisons of the position of the foramen magnum in early hominid species are useful to determine how comfortable a particular species was when walking on two limbs (bipedalism) rather than four (quadrupedalism).

Read more about this topic:  Foramen Magnum

Famous quotes containing the word importance:

    Any novel of importance has a purpose. If only the “purpose” be large enough, and not at outs with the passional inspiration.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    One’s condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one’s being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness—the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)