The Trajectory of Carlos Serrano in Mexican Physical Anthropology

Abstract

This work analyses the scientific contributions of Carlos Serrano Sanchez (born in Orizaba, Mexico: 1942) to different fields of physical anthropology in Mexico, from the late 1970s to the present. The “theory of in situ transformations” that he proposed in 1990 in carrying out craniological and somatological investigations in Mesoamerica is reviewed to explain the processes of brachycephalic and human groups mixing, and his way of applying Romney and Vogt’s model of microevolution studies in the Mayan area. A detailed study of his incursion into anthropological primatology in 1989, and how from 2000 he diversified his scientific activity by coordinating molecular anthropology, health-disease, and forensic physical anthropology projects, fundamentally so-called CARAMEX, are presented.