Cerebral rubicon

A "cerebral rubicon" in paleontology is the minimum cranial capacity required for a specimen to be classified as a certain paleospecies or genus. The term is mostly used in reference to human evolution.[1]

The Scottish anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith set the limit at 750 cc for the genus Homo.[1] The minimum cranial capacity for the species Homo sapiens is generally set at 900cc.[1]

One of the reasons for the proposal to exclude Homo habilis from the genus Homo, and renaming it as "Australopithecus habilis", is the small capacity of their cranium (363cc -600 cc).

Origin

The term is most likely a reference to the Rubicon river, which in the time of the Roman Empire marked the border between Cisapline Gaul and Italy proper. Crossing the river with an army, as Julius Caesar did in 49 B.C., was illegal by Roman law and is commonly seen as the "point-of-no-return" for Caesar's revolution. As such, a "rubicon" can be used idiomatically as any strict dividing line or point-of-no-return.

gollark: > so dumping a shit ton of current to the 80% mark (which is usually close to nominal) isnt bad for itWouldn't the battery get pretty hot, which might be a problem?
gollark: Right now the solution for fast-charging phones seems to just be to dump ridiculous amounts of power into the batteries, which seems kind of bad?
gollark: Supercapacitor-based phones would be neat, if they can get them to about the same energy density as current stuff somehow.
gollark: I think right now degrading batteries are a significant issue.
gollark: I mean, most of these "smart"er cars probably have wireless features of some sort, and probably zero budget spent on security.

See also

References
  1. Holmes, Andrew (2015-01-02). "Live Like Dirt: Homo files: the cerebral rubicon". Livelikedirt.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
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