Word: cranium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...degree cliff in training, and finally the American boxer stopping hundreds of punishing sounding blows with his forehead and chin and upper cheekbones. Apparently, Rocky thinks that masochistic training strengthens the bones in the human head to the extent that a steamroller running over the prepared cranium will cause only a slight scratch above the left eye. Warning: readers should not attempt this sort of thing at home, on their spouses, children, pets...
...hoary belief involves dinosaur stupidity: the hapless creatures died out because their bodies continued to grow bigger while their brains remained small. Indeed, cranium measurements seem to indicate that at least some species were not terribly cerebral: one type of brontosaurus, for example, weighed about 30 tons, and probably had only a half-pound brain. If the dinosaurs did indeed become progressively less intelligent, the theory goes, they would have lost the ability to adapt to changes in the environment...
...hominid, given a catalog number of WT 15000, was one of a group that was directly ancestral to man and is known to have used fire and lived in caves as well as on the plains of Africa. Members of the species migrated as far as Asia, where the cranium of the so-called Java Man was discovered in 1891 and the Peking...
While WT 15000 has the beetled brow, small cranium (700 to 800 cubic centimeters, about half that of modern man) and short forehead associated with virtually all human precursors, his size surprised the scientists. From the development of his teeth, they knew that the hominid died in his youth, about age twelve. But the length of his thigh bones and the size of his vertebrae indicate that he stood about 5 ft. 4 in. tall and may have weighed as much as 150 lbs. This was the size hitherto postulated by scientists for a full-grown Homo erectus...
...arrived at a design that suspends the chair on a central axis that pivots much as the body does at the waist and hips. The pivoting motion is controlled by a gas-cylinder mechanism activated from the armrest. The headrest supports the neck at the underside of the cranium. The elbows repose without being pushed...