THE MISSING LINK Part I:  Liza Looks for Lucy by Elizabeth Strasser Department of Anthropology California State University, Sacramento

Dr. Liza Street is a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She's been in the field for two and a half grueling months collecting fossils in the Turkana District of northwest Kenya, East Africa. She has an excellent team in the field, made up of experienced local Kikuyu fossil hunters, plus several graduate and undergraduate students from a variety of American universities. The team has been scouring the badlands daily, with only a day each week to rest, bathe, catch up with mail, reading, laundry, etc. While everyone on the team knows that paleontological fieldwork is a daily routine of finding crocodiles, turtles, rodents, horses, etc., the feeling of disappointment is nevertheless palpable. After all, they are there to find human ancestors.

One day at lunch, two weeks before the Americans are due to return to the States, Sam (an especially eager undergraduate) arrives breathlessly at the agreed upon lunch-spot. He rushes to Liza with the news that he has found some pieces of an ancestral human skull. While munching her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, Liza encourages Sam to report what he has found. As Sam hurriedly begins recounting the find and the circumstances surrounding it, Liza's mind wanders to her first experiences in paleoanthropology.

At that time, Liza was a sophomore in college filled with the desire to make a contribution to science and to be famous. But, first she had to learn the tools of her profession. Her advisor, Professor Jeff Black, knew that the only way to learn anatomy was to spend time with specimens, examining them in detail. He set Liza in a room with dozens of skulls and instructed her to figure out the various parts of the skulls.

YOU SHOULD EACH HAVE A SKULL TO WORK WITH.  AS A GROUP, MAKE A LIST BELOW OF THE MAJOR PARTS OF THE SKULL THAT YOU CAN IDENTIFY (not all the lines need to be filled).

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WHAT MIGHT BE THE FUNCTIONS OF THE VARIOUS MAJOR PARTS OF THE SKULL? (Write in your answer below.)