11/7/2023 0 Comments Missing link human evolution lucy![]() Experts disagree on how to classify them all. By some counts, there may have been more than 20 hominin species. It did not consist of a nearly unbroken chain, one hominin smoothly evolving into the next through time.įossil discoveries in the 1960s and ’70s revealed a bushier family tree. All in the familyīut human evolution was not a gradual, linear process. By about 300,000 years ago, our species - Homo sapiens - had arrived. By at least 2 million years ago, members of our genus started moving into Eurasia. These members of our family had larger brains than their ancestors. Our genus, Homo, arrived by 2 million years ago, maybe earlier. Grasslands were spreading across the continent. That may signal they were less aggressive and more social.īetween about 3.5 million and 3 million years ago, some of our ancestors ventured beyond wooded areas. Walking upright on two legs distinguished these ancestors from other apes. Sometime between 9 million and 6 million years ago, the first hominins emerged. Paleoanthropologists have sketched a rough timeline of our evolution. He works at the University of Colorado Denver. “I think everybody agrees and understands that Africa was very pivotal in the evolution of our species,” says Charles Musiba. But one concept unifies these scientists: the idea that our roots go back to Africa. The study of human evolution is a field known for bitter feuds and rivalries. Genetics show humans likely trace back to Africa They use a more restrictive term - hominin - to refer to us and our most closely related extinct cousins. ![]() ![]() In fact, scientists now include great apes in the hominid family. More recently, genetic studies have reinforced this story.Īfrican apes are indeed our closest living relatives, with chimpanzees most closely related to us. But since that first discovery, anthropologists have amassed many thousands more fossils that have pointed to Africa as our place of origin. That fossil wasn’t enough to confirm Africa as our homeland. Known as Hominidae, this family includes our species and all of our close, extinct relatives. This fossil was the most apelike yet for a hominid - that is, a member of the extended human family. Dart was an anatomist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Based on its features, Raymond Dart concluded this fossil was a fabled “missing link” between humans and apes. It was the fossilized skull of a toddler. In 1924, miners in a South African limestone quarry made a surprising find. So had Darwin picked the wrong continent? Over the next 50 years, more would trickle in from there and Asia. The few human fossils known had all been found in Europe. But at the time, there was no fossil evidence to support Darwin’s claim. His reasoning: Among all animals, the African apes - gorillas and chimpanzees - were most similar to humans. Back in 1871, he hypothesized that humankind’s earliest ancestors must have lived in Africa. OtwellĬharles Darwin was among the earlier scientists to look for the ultimate roots of our family tree. Still, a lot of the continent is left to study. This has turned up interesting finds almost everywhere they have looked. Since then, most paleoanthropologists have set their sights on eastern and southern Africa (major areas of exploration are shown). The search for hominin fossils in Africa began in the 1920s.
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