Australopithecus africanus

Australopithecus africanus In the greatest debate of anthropology lies the all consuming desire to know where we as humans come from. Who were our ancestors and what made them so different from us? It is debated if Australopithecus africanus or Australopithecus afarensis is the direct ancestor to the genus homo. Through critical evaluation of the features of the skeleton, diet and dentition, and use of bipedality, it is evident that A. africanus is a direct ancestor to modern humans while still possessing features from both modern humans and previous hominins. What makes A. africanus primarily more human-like than other australopithecines are its teeth and premolars. They had relatively large molars and premolars with shorter canines, the…

(H) Width (W) Length (L) CC (cm³) .5236(LxWxH) Ardipithecus ramidus 3.5 13.8 25.36 20 8 9.7 10.8 438.8 Australopithecus aethiopicus 4.2 21.2 19.8 40 9 13.8 13.8 897.43 Australopithecus afarensis 3.5 14.6 23.97 23 9.1 11.11 16.8 578 Australopithecus africanus 4.3 15.9 27 27 10 8.4 12 527.78 Australopithecus boisei 3.5 18.9 28.5 45 9.8 12.5 15.5 994.185 Homo erectus 7 19.6 35.71 27 11.2 13 15.1 1151.16 Homo habilis 4 11.9 33.6 40 9.5 8 12.8 972.8 Homo heidelbergensis 4.5 17.2 26.1 35 11.2 12.1…

splitters paradigm results in different models of Hominin phylogeny. Ardipithecus lived 5.8-5.5 million year ago and Ardipithecus has upright, two legs and seems to have lived in woodland habitat. Their fossils suggest that they had cranial, facial, dental, and upper limb bones. They are ape like in size, anatomy and habitat. But they are categorized as Homini because of their bipedalism. Ardipithecus is the earliest widely accepted hominin genus who live Lumpur tree is saying that…

leg—putting stress on your leg bones. when talking about constantly walking upright “Every time you take a step, you briefly stand on one leg—putting stress on your leg bones.” (Smithsonian Museum), this stress that is shown of fossils of bones of the species of Australopithecus anamensis in the area of bone below the knee shows very strong evidence that this type of individual would walk upright. By around 4 million years ago most early humans at that time where bipedal shown by fossils found…

great attention is given to a baby’s first steps, little, if any, attention is given to the advantages of this form of movement. The benefits of walking, running, and standing while using two legs instead of four go unremarked. It is simply natural for humans to travel this way. Humans are not the only animals to use bipedalism, birds and some mammals, including primates, can also walk on two legs, but none quite like human beings. This is truly an important trait shared by people and yet it is…

is the specific conditions required for attaining the fossilization of an organism – this leaves many organisms, or perhaps species of organisms based on their habitat, without documentation. It is still unsure the exact amount of hominine species that existed; however, with new fossils being discovered occasionally (take “Lucy” for example), human’s evolutionary timeline becomes less muddled. The earliest years of transition after the lineage split are poorly documented. The earliest…

Scientific Research, and Donald Carl Johanson, 34, of Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, discovered stone instruments going back 2.6 million years in the Afar area of Ethiopia. After two years their group made a considerably more sensational disclosure. On November 24, 1974, Donald Johanson and his understudy Tom Gray were reviewing a site named Hadar in the Afar area of Ethiopia, East -Africa when they saw a bone sticking out of the ground. They started…

Alice travels with Warren Clarke to see footprints that show evidence of early humans arrival dated back to over 20,000 years ago. After that, she looks for signs of any bones left from the ancient giant kangaroos that grew to 2.5 meters and became extinct over 50,000 years ago. Because of bones left from the “Mungo” man dated between 40 and 60,000 years ago she concluded that people could have lived there before entering Europe. She then traveled back to Africa to see how it would have been…

the latter was not man’s predecessor, but rather a totally different sub-species that competed with the former for survival. It is safe to say that the closest living things that resemble a neanderthal would be gorillas and chimpanzees, big, burly, and strong. Humans are frailer, smaller, and weaker than both, and thus inferior to a neanderthal. The latter were amazingly skillful at weapon making and hunting, and were around much longer than the early humans (McDougall, 2009). Much like a…

Paranthropus larger braincases than Australopithecus. Paranthropus is associated with stone tools both in southern and eastern Africa, and there is a considerable information they made and utilized by these robust australopithecines. Most the early Homo was the tool maker, and some of the hand fossils from Swartkrans, South Africa, indicate that the hand of Paranthropus robustus adapted for precision grasping and tool use. Most Paranthropus species seem almost not have language for their…