ABSTRACT
As can be seen in the tables provided throughout this book, and discussed in more detail in Chapters 5 and 9, the evolution of the vertebrate head, neck, pectoral and forelimb muscles seemed to have involved more events during which a muscle became subdivided (splitting: e.g., diverging arrows in Tables 5.2, 5.4, 5.6, 5.8, 9.2, 9.3, 10.2 and 10.3) than events that involve the fusion of muscles (e.g., shown as converging arrows in these latter tables, although it should be noted that not all the converging arrows shown in these tables actually refer to a true fusion of the muscles during evolution and/or ontogeny: see below). However, contrary to what is often stated in general textbooks (e.g., Kisia and Onyango, 2005), this does not mean that ‘higher’ primates, and namely modern humans, have more muscles than, for instance, other mammals and, to some extent (e.g., hand muscles and mandibular muscles), even than non-mammalian taxa such as reptiles or amphibians.
