What Were Primarily Ancestral Characteristics

1. The physical states observed in the species were primarily ancestral characteristics ranging from the more distinct species, gorilla gorilla, to modern human, homo sapiens, they all had molars, flat face with forward facing eyes. Ancestral/primitive characters are the characters that were present in a common ancestor whereas the derived characters are those type of characters that were not present in the common ancestor. One of the observed characteristics for derived characters are large cranium which gradually increased from the opposing small cranium present in the ancestors.

2. The conclusions that we can make from these observation is that the characteristics in species gradually changed over time for the betterment. Different species had different diets, earliest hominids were vegetarians, hence they needed large molars. As time went by, they started to scavenge meat and started cooking food which eventually changed dentine to having canines and pre-molars. The presence of large cranium supports large brains. The cranial capacity directly co-relates to the species being more social and invention of tools.

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Each characteristics of species defines their lifestyle. From Australopithecus afarensis having canine tooth projected beyond the chewing surface and having canine diastema depicts the possibility of species having raw carnivorous food. Throughout time, species started exploring more food and started cooking leading to large molars to chew their food. The width of the dental arcade helped later species. The skull and vertebral attachment shows how species evolved to have a bipedal lifestyle. The skull and vertebral attachment index is low for gorilla gorilla as they walked using their all four limbs where as it gradually increased from Australopithecus afarensis where the index increased as they started walking