The evolution of human altriciality and brain development in comparative context

Datasets and scripts used to carry out analyses of developmental patterns across mammals, with a particular focus on the comparison of humans with other species. The study includes and in-depth analysis of data on neonatal and adult brain and body size across 140 species of placental mammals. The study includes a comparison of the proportion of neonatal to adult brain and body size across the major orders of mammals. It also includes the measurement of branch-specific evolutionary rates across the mammalian phylogeny, as well as a comparison of the scaling relationships between neonatal and adult values between orders based on phylogenetic ANCOVAs. The final part of our study includes an inference of whether key neurodevelopmental events happened pre- or postnatally across different hominin species, which is based on published models by Workman et al (2013).