Cranial capacity

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2009)

Cranial capacity is a measure of the volume of the interior of the cranium (also called the braincase or brainpan) of those vertebrates who have both a cranium and a brain. The most commonly used unit of measure is the cubic centimetre or cc. The volume of the cranium is used as a rough indicator of the size of the brain, and this in turn is used as a rough indicator of the potential intelligence of the organism. However, larger cranial capacity is not always indicative of a more intelligent organism, since larger capacities are required for controlling a larger body, or in some cases are an adaptive feature for life in a colder environment.

Examples of cranial capacity:

• Orangutans: 275–500 cc
• Chimpanzees: 275–500 cc
• Gorillas: 340–752 cc
• Humans: 1200–1850 cc
• Neanderthals: 1100–1900 cc

Examples of early hominids:

See also

• Brain-to-body mass ratio
• Craniometry
• Human evolution
• Neuroscience and intelligence

References

This anatomy article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e