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Human Evolution

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Hobbits on Flores, Indonesia. Video. Australopithecus afarensis. Australopithecus afarensis Nickname: Lucy's species Where Lived: Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania) When Lived: Between about 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago Australopithecus afarensis is one of the longest-lived and best-known early human species—paleoanthropologists have uncovered remains from more than 300 individuals!

Australopithecus afarensis

Found between 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago in Eastern Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania), this species survived for more than 900,000 years, which is over four times as long as our own species has been around. Hominidae: Information. Until re­cently, most clas­si­fi­ca­tions in­cluded only hu­mans in this fam­ily; other apes were put in the fam­ily Pongi­dae (from which the gib­bons were some­times sep­a­rated as the Hy­lo­bati­dae). The ev­i­dence link­ing hu­mans to go­ril­las and chimps has grown dra­mat­i­cally in the past two decades, es­pe­cially with in­creased use of mol­e­c­u­lar tech­niques. It now ap­pears that chimps, go­ril­las, and hu­mans form a clade of closely re­lated species; orang­utans are slightly less close phy­lo­ge­net­i­cally, and gib­bons are a more dis­tant branch.

Here we fol­low a clas­si­fi­ca­tion re­flect­ing those re­la­tion­ships. Chimps, go­ril­las, hu­mans, and orang­utans make up the fam­ily Ho­minidae; gib­bons are sep­a­rated as the closely re­lated Hy­lo­bati­dae. Thus con­sti­tuted, the Ho­minidae in­cludes 4 gen­era and 5 species. New life - welcome Changi" by Manuela Kulpa. Human Evolution. Did Neanderthals speak with a high-pitched voice? Neanderthals had different bodies than we do.

Did Neanderthals speak with a high-pitched voice?

In general, they were stockier and shorter, for instance. And there were other physical differences, as well. It's hard to say what these differences meant in practice but it's fun to speculate. You could build up a pretty good about how those short, study bodies might have helped Neanderthals be better adapted to cold. Or, you could look at the shape of a male Neanderthal's voice box, and think about how that shape might affect the sounds that came out.

So that's what this video is about. Keeping up with the Hominin. “Hominin – the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors (including members of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus).”

Keeping up with the Hominin

Australian Museum. A lot had happened this year with hominin research and some would redefine conventional understandings of this group. Below is a list of new studies that came out this year that I find quite interesting on hominin. Read up so you can show off in class with your knowledge of current hominin research. Did Humans Really Migrate From Africa? New Proof Could Undermine Out of Africa Theory. Newly discovered stone artifacts that suggest humanity left Africa through the Arabian Peninsula could re-write early human history.

Did Humans Really Migrate From Africa? New Proof Could Undermine Out of Africa Theory

More than 100 stone tools discovered in Oman showed that early humans were already living in southern Arabia much earlier than scientists had thought. Modern humans had first lived in Africa over 200,000 years ago but scientists believe that they didn't migrate worldwide until 40,000 to 70,000 years ago. The new study by an international team of researchers, show that the stone artifacts are at least 100,000 years old, which could blow that long believed theory out of the water.

"After a decade of searching in southern Arabia for some clue that might help us understand early human expansion, at long last we've found the smoking gun of their exit from Africa," said lead researcher Jeffrey Rose, a paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in England. "What makes this so exciting is that the answer is a scenario almost never considered.

" Human Evolution. Evolution of human intelligence. The evolution of human intelligence refers to a set of theories that attempt to explain how human intelligence has evolved.

Evolution of human intelligence

These theories are closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the emergence of human language. Many traits of human intelligence, such as empathy, theory of mind, mourning, ritual, and the use of symbols and tools, are already apparent in great apes although in less sophisticated forms than found in humans. History[edit] Hominidae[edit] Chimpanzee mother and baby The great apes show considerable abilities for cognition and empathy. Ancestry5_large.jpg (JPEG Image, 3000×1536 pixels) - Scaled (42%)

Homo cepranensis – Three hundred times as ancient as Rome. Personality Types. The Meaning of Life Revealed! -This post is excerpted, with changes, from the book Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life by Steve Stewart-Williams - available now from Amazon.com , Amazon.ca , and Amazon.uk .

The Meaning of Life Revealed!

Evolutionary theory answers one of the most profound and fundamental questions human beings have ever asked themselves, a question that has plagued reflective minds for as long as reflective minds have existed in the universe: The question was answered in 1859 by the English naturalist Charles Darwin, and the answer can be stated in just six words: "What? " I hear you exclaim. "Is that it? That's no answer! " What I'm going to argue in this post is that evolutionary theory provides an answer to this sense of the question as well. A lot of answers have come from religion. To serve or submit to God (the word "Islam" means submission) to fulfil the purpose for which God made us.

Te map. The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program. Te map. Human Evolution & Archaeology. Neanderthal genome yields insights into human evolution and evidence of interbreeding. Ancestral Lines. Evolutionary biologists use a cladogram, the treelike diagram of evolutionary branches or clades, to organize species into lines of evolutionary descent across time.

Ancestral Lines

Biologists use three types of evidence to deduce evolutionary connections: genetics, morphology, and geologic dating. (Behavior, normally a key part of evolutionary studies, can only be inferred in extinct species — for example, by examining the ecology in which the species flourished and the species adaptations for eating and locomotion.) Analyses of primate fossils and the genetic relatedness of living primates converge to the conclusion that humans and chimpanzees branched from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago. DNA recovered from several uncontaminated Neanderthalensis fossils indicated that modern humans and extinct neanderthals diverged about 400,000 years ago; but more recent studies show that they must have interbred within Europe or the Middle East since then.

Human evolution theory founded on female sexual selection and neoteny addressing autism, female infanticide, biological and cultural evolution. Timeline of human evolution. Why human evolution accelerated. This is a story about my work on recent human evolution, describing some of the main results and how the work came about.

Why human evolution accelerated

The story refers to my paper (with Gregory Cochran, Eric Wang, Henry Harpending, and Robert Moyzis), "Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution," which came out in December, 2007. Like most good stories in biology, this one begins with Darwin. Darwin was always very interested in animal breeding, which he considered the best analogy for the process of natural selection. Of course, if you're breeding livestock and want to select for some characteristics, it is important to select from as large a herd as possible, because large populations have more variation in them. Darwin recognized this as an important condition for natural selection, which relies on sufficient variation in natural populations. These words from the Origin, "number is of the highest importance for success" were influential. Human Evolution-Science Tracer Bullet-Library of Congress. Sources useful in locating published material on the process of organic change or development by which human beings have acquired the distinguishing morphological and physiological characteristics that they have today.

Human Evolution-Science Tracer Bullet-Library of Congress

An update of TB 73-13, this guide is intended for those who wish to review published materials on human evolution in the Library of Congress. Not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, this Tracer Bullet, as the name of the series implies, is designed to put the reader "on target. " The path of evolution. Human Evolution Happened Fastest Among Tibetans: Study. Fossil Hominids: the evidence for human evolution. The Future of Human Evolution. Human Evolution: The fossil evidence in 3D. Welcome to the UCSB online 3D gallery of modern primate relatives and fossil ancestors of humans.

Human Evolution: The fossil evidence in 3D

This gallery contains five modern primate crania, and five fossil crania. The crania can be rotated 360 degrees. 'Lucy's baby' rattles human evolution. The skull of the juvenile Australopithecus afarensis, dubbed 'Lucy's baby' Credit: Zeresenay Alemseged/Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultrual Heritages SYDNEY: The discovery of an infant human ancestor, dubbed ‘Lucy’s baby’, will shake up our understanding of human evolution, according to its finders in Dikika, Ethiopia. Two articles published today in the British journal Nature identified the fossil remains – the oldest and most complete infant skeleton found to date – as those of a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million years ago. She belongs to the species Australopithecus afarensis, of which the iconic adult skeleton, nicknamed ‘Lucy’, is also a member. “The Dikika girl stands as one of the major discoveries in the history of palaeoanthropology,” research team leader Zeresenay Alemseged said, citing the remarkably well-preserved condition of the bones, the geological age and completeness of the specimen.

Intelligent people have 'unnatural' preferences and values that are novel in human evolution. More intelligent people are significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years. " "Evolutionarily novel" preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess. The Future of Homo Sapiens, The Future of Human Evolution. Will the human species, Homo Sapiens, continue to evolve in the next millions of years?

If so, how? What can we learn from what we know about Homo Sapiens development until now? By professor Jacob Palme, First version 29-May-2006, last revision 23-Mar-2014 The Creation of Homo Sapiens The human species (Homo Sapiens sapiens) started its existence between 110 000 and 50 000 years ago. The earth has been capable of supporting life for about 3 milliard years (miliard = thousand million), and is expected to continue being able to support life for between 200 million and 5 milliard years in the future. Using the higher estimate, if we view the period of being able to support life as 24 hours, then we are now about 9 o'clock in the morning, humans diverged from the apes about a minute ago and the human species started to exist 1-2 seconds ago. Do Humans Matter? Timeline of Dietary Shifts in the Human Line of Evolution.

(Humanity's Evolutionary Prehistoric Diet and Ape Diets--continued, Can you give us a timeline of dietary developments in the human line of evolution to show readers the overall picture from a bird's-eye view, so we can set a context for further discussion here? Sure. We need to start at the beginning of the primate line long before apes and humans ever evolved, though, to make sure we cover all the bases, including the objections often made by vegetarians (and fruitarians for that matter) that those looking into prehistory simply haven't looked far enough back to find our "original" diet.

Ken Miller on Human Evolution. Human Evolution Episode 1 (2010) (NOVA) 1/4 HD. Homo Sapiens, Meet Your New Astounding Family. If Ardi’s skeleton was an unexpected mosaic, her habitat was even more curious. Ongoing human evolution could explain recent rise in certain disorders. The Chinese Room Argument. 1. Overview. Fossil Hominids, Human Evolution: Thomas Huxley & Eugene Dubois. Genomes Shed Light on Human Evolution, Leading Scientists to Search for More Subtle Clues. Human Evolution. Human Evolution.