Australopithecus

Macroevolution is a large-scale evolutionary change over a long time period, or major evolutionary changes over a short period (Stanford et al, 2013). An example of this can be demonstrated by the difference in the hands of the modern human and Australopithecus afarensis. A. afarensis is known to have lived between 2.9 and 3.9 million years age. The paleoanthropological evidence of these hominids hands resembled that of an arboreal species. The fossils show curved proximal phalanges suggesting…

Throughout the history of humanity, a top priority of its populace has been to obtain enough food to stay alive. According to historians and scientists, this urge for consumption has since led to major changes in the human race. One such reshaping occurred from 2.5 to 1.9 million years ago with the invention of cooked food. The second was the domestication of the three main cereal grains, wheat, rice, and maize, which happened approximately 10,500 to 5,500 years ago. Each of these…

Even in the skull fossils ranging from Australopithecus africanus to modern day humans mentioned earlier, the skull of Homo neanderthalensis is nowhere to be found. I think it is important to include Neanderthals because changes to their skeleton may have been the result of changes in the Earth’s…

water, evolution is going to turn you into a freak. On page 49 in Tuck Everlasting, Angus said, “And everywhere around us thing is moving and growing and changing.” One of these changes is evolution. Over 3 to 4 million years, humans evolved from australopithecus afarensis to homo sapiens sapiens. A few million years from now, who knows what humans would be like? We only know they’d be very different and may not even be the same species. The Tucks would be considered living early hominids.…

Biological Genetics and Criminal Behavior Over the of course of the years, different criminologists and scientists have tried to understand the reasons and origins of crime and deviant behavior. What makes a person commit the most atrocious and heinous crimes? This is a question many people try to understand. Many factors affect the actions of these criminals, from biological factors to psychological issues. The big debate among these studies is whether such criminal behaviors are inherited…

anatomy professor named Raymond Dart, and a zoologist C.K. Brain. For this purpose, both men are “analyzing a collect of fossilized bones found in a South African limestone quarry…[called,] Australopithecus Africanus” (Marshall 83). In addition, both men had polar opposite interpretations of the Australopithecus, one being the hunter and the other being the hunted. On the other hand, my professor is an environmentalist, he wanted to prove the hypothesis by seeing if he can hunt and animal. For…

The bonobo (Pan paniscus), formerly called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan; the other is Pan Troglodytes, or the common chimpanzee. Although the name "chimpanzee" is sometimes used to refer to both species together, it is usually understood as referring to the common chimpanzee, whereas Pan paniscus is usually referred to as the bonobo. Fossils of Pan species were not described until…

Homo ergaster, meaning ‘workman’, lived in eastern and southern Africa around 1.5 million years ago. The ergaster had a good run for about 500,000 years, until vanishing from fossil records 1.3 million years ago. Homo ergaster was discovered in 1949 somewhere in southern Africa by prominent South African hominin paleontologist, John T. Robinson. Researchers have argued back and forth on the the idea that Home ergaster is a valid taxon due to the similarities between ergaster and erectus. Some…

Summary: Three scientists— Rick Potts from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Susan Anton from New York University, and Leslie Aiello from the Wenner-Gren Foundation— determined that the characteristics: bipedal gait, body size, and delayed growth and development for the kids, of modern humans may not have evolved all at once, but evolution was more of a “patchwork” adapting to fluctuating wet and arid conditions in Africa. They came to this conclusion based on their work…

In today’s society, many people have good educational background however the usage of words sometimes did not match up to an individual’s knowledge. This can be seen using the word theory, especially in evolutionary theory. People usually refer to a theory as a guess and fact as the truth. However, according to the National Academy of Science, a theory is “a plausible or scientifically acceptable, well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of…