Word: hominids
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...notion that multiple human species are the norm, not the exception, has only got stronger with a series of major scientific discoveries. Since 1994, four new species of hominid have been added to the human family tree, with the latest announced just a few months ago. These date from 800,000 years ago all the way back to 4.4 million years B.P. (before the present...
These discoveries not only further confirm that multiple hominid species are the rule but also bring us much closer to understanding the ultimate mysteries of human evolution: What were the changes that led to modern humans? When did these changes take place, and why? And perhaps most intriguing, will we continue to evolve, or has Homo sapiens (wise man) made evolution obsolete...
...recently as five years ago, all that scientists could really tell about our earliest ancestors was when they first appeared. Molecular biologists had measured the differences between human and chimpanzee DNA, then averaged the rate of genetic change over time. By calculating backward, they determined that great apes and hominids branched from a common ancestor between 6 million and 4 million years ago. But no fossils were on hand to support this scenario. The oldest hominid species known, Australopithecus afarensis (southern ape of the Afar), could be dated back only 3.6 million years. Its most famous member, Lucy, unearthed...
...University of Chicago when I first met Louis and Mary's son Richard. He had just completed a preliminary presentation on his new finds from Lake Turkana (then Lake Rudolf). I told him I would be in Nairobi the next summer and wanted to see his exciting hominid fossils. A year younger than I, he had chosen, after becoming disenchanted with the safari business, to follow in his parents' footsteps. It appeared that he too possessed the "Leakey luck" and was well on the way to stardom in paleoanthropology...
Human beings and the great apes had a common ancestor about 5 million years ago. The genes of the two groups differ hardly at all, but some of them are differently arranged. By using that information, along with hominid fossils, we shall learn what genetic changes made it possible for the ancestors of modern people to stand upright (about 4 million years ago) and then to speak. As a by-product, we shall be able to trace the migration routes of our human ancestors who emigrated from Africa and came to populate the surface of the earth. A half-century...