The neurocranium of<i>Ekweeconfractus amorui</i>gen. et sp. nov. (Hyaenodonta, Mammalia) and the evolution of the brain in some hyaenodontan carnivores
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We report on a nearly complete cranium of Ekweeconfractus amorui gen. et sp. nov. (Hyaenodonta, Teratodontinae), from the early Miocene of Moruorot, Kenya. The cranium is dorsoventrally compressed, but sufficiently intact to allow for digital reconstruction of the neurocranium, resulting in a digital endocast that gives us a first glimpse into teratodontine brain morphology. The virtual endocast is one of the most well preserved of any hyaenodont known to date, with many of the cranial nerves and blood vessels identifiable. Endocasts are known from only a handful of hyaenodont species and little work has been done on hyaenodont brains in recent decades. To better understand the evolution of the brain in these animals, we place the endocast of E. amorui gen. et sp. nov., as well as several other previously described endocasts, in the latest phylogenetic framework. This analysis suggests that the expansion of the neocortex occurred convergently in several clades of Hyaenodonta. Our study provides a basis for future research on brain evolution in Hyaenodonta.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".