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Determining which species of australopithecine (if any) is ancestral to the genus Homo is a question that is a top priority for many paleoanthropologists, but one that will likely elude any conclusive answers for years to come. Nearly every possible species has been suggested as a likely candidate, but none are overwhelmingly convincing.
The scientific community took 20 more years to widely accept Australopithecus as a member of the human family tree. In 1997, an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton with skull was found in the Sterkfontein caves of Gauteng, South Africa. It is now called "Little Foot" and it is around 3.7 million years old.
Australopithecus garhi was using stone tools at about 2.5 Ma. Homo habilis is the oldest species given the designation Homo, by Leakey et al. in 1964. H. habilis is intermediate between Australopithecus afarensis and H. erectus, and there have been suggestions to re-classify it within genus Australopithecus, as Australopithecus habilis.
Genus Homo is assumed to have emerged by around 2.8 million years ago, with Homo habilis being found at Lake Turkana, Kenya. The delineation of the "human" genus, Homo, from Australopithecus is somewhat contentious, for which
Australopithecus anamensis: 1984 Kenya: Kiptalam Cheboi [11] KNM-KP 271 4.00 [15] Australopithecus anamensis: 1965 Kanapoi, Kenya: Bryan Patterson [11] Laetoli Footprints: 3.70 Bipedal hominin: 1976 Tanzania: Mary Leakey: LH 4: 3.40±0.50 Australopithecus afarensis: 1974 Laetoli, Tanzania: Mary Leakey [16] KSD-VP-1/1 3.58 Australopithecus ...
Homo (from Latin homÅ 'human') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis.
Australopithecus prometheus, otherwise known as Little Foot has recently been dated at 3.67 million years old through a new dating technique, making the genus Australopithecus as old as afarensis. [33] Given the opposable big toe found on Little Foot, it seems that the specimen was a good climber.
Australopithecine bone technology was first proposed by Dart in the 1950s with what he termed the "osteodontokeratic culture", which he attributed to A. africanus at Makapansgat dating to 3–2.6 million years ago. These bones are no longer considered to have been tools, and the existence of this culture is not supported.