Uner Tan

Uner Tan (Turkish: Üner Tan) (born May 1, 1937) is a Turkish neuroscientist and evolutionary biologist. He is best known for his discovery and study of the human quadrupedal condition he named the Uner Tan syndrome. He taught at Cukurova University until his retirement in 2004 and had previously taught at several other institutions.

Tan was born in Ünye, Turkey. He graduated from secondary school in Corum and started college at Ege University, at the Faculty of Medicine, in 1956. He continued at Göttingen University and graduated from there and the Max-Planck Institute in 1966. He returned to Turkey at 1969 and worked at Hacettepe University in Ankara, and Ataturk University in Erzurum, Black Sea Technical University in Trabzon and Cukurova University in Adana. He retired in 2004.

According to Tan, persons affected by this syndrome walk with a quadrupedal locomotion and are afflicted with "primitive" speech and severe mental retardation; he postulated that this is an example of backward evolution. He proposed the syndrome after studying the Ulas family of rural southern Turkey, five of whom have these symptoms. The proposed syndrome was featured in the 2006 BBC2 documentary The Family That Walks On All Fours. After his study of the Ulas family, Tan went on to diagnose Uner Tan syndrome in several other families.

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