The Role of Endocasts in the Study of Brain Evolution

Endocasts are windows into deep history and as such provide modern neuroscience a more complete appreciation of: (1) the brain's evolutionary potential (by allowing sampling of extinct lineages) and (2) the origins of modern neurological disparity. Imaging technology has increased the number of endocasts and thus their integrative potential for informing broad patterns of brain evolution. Our goal is to facilitate this integration by explicating the inferential framework in which endocasts are studied, their anatomical identity, and the hypotheses they can and cannot address. Examples of endocasts' explanatory power and limitations are drawn largely from birds and their extinct relatives.