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• n  the part of the skull that encloses the brain

• Scientists determined the age of the skull, unearthed near Hofmeyr, South Africa, by testing the levels of radiation in sand that had filled the braincase.
• Last year the 18,000-year-old remains of a 1-m-tall woman with a braincase the size of a chimpanzee were discovered at the same site.
• That loss in muscle strength, they say, allowed the braincase and brain to grow larger.

• cranium
• brainpan