Philipp Mitteroecker, recipient of the Rohlf Medal, delivered his Provost's Lecture, "The (Mis)Measure of Human Evolution," on Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at the Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University.
In this talk, Mitteroecker, Professor of Biostatistics and Biometrics in the department of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Vienna, gave an overview of his research in human evolution and morphometric methods. He discussed the evolution of human childbirth, which is a fascinating evolutionary puzzle. It seems paradoxical that such a painful and sometimes dangerous process has evolved. Mitteroecker also presented a model of the underlying evolutionary dynamics and discuss the involved biological, medical and sociocultural factors, and touched upon the ethical and political implications of this work.
