Cro-Magnon

The Cro-Magnon were the first early Homo sapiens sapiens of the European Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnons were radiometrically dated to 35,000 years ago. The French geologist Louis Lartet discovered the first five skeletons of Cro-Magnon in March 1868 in a rock shelter named Abri de Crô-Magnon, at Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France. The type specimen from this find is Cro-Magnon 1, carbon dated to about 28,000 14C years old. Similar specimens were subsequently discovered in other parts of Europe and neighboring areas.

The condition and placement of the remains of Cro-Magnon 1, along with pieces of shell and animal tooth in what appear to have been pendants or necklaces raises the question whether they were buried intentionally. Analysis of the pathology of the skeletons shows that the humans of this period led a physically difficult life. In addition to infection, several of the individuals found at the shelter had fused vertebrae in their necks, indicating traumatic injury; the adult female found at the shelter had survived for some time with a skull fracture. As these injuries would be life threatening even today, this suggests that Cro-Magnons believed in community support and took care of each other's injuries.

Like Neanderthals, the Cro-Magnon were primarily big-game hunters, killing mammoth, cave bears, horses and reindeer. In Mezhirich village in Ukraine, several huts built from mammoth bones have been unearthed. Cro-Magnon artifacts suggest that they knew how to make woven clothing. Apart from the mammoth bone huts mentioned, they constructed shelter of rocks, clay, branches, and animal hide. These early humans used manganese and iron oxides to paint pictures and may have created the first calendar around 15,000 years ago.

The Cro-Magnon shared the European landscape with Neanderthals for some 15,000 years or more. Recent genetic studies of a wide selection of modern humans indicate some form of hybridization took place between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon. About 3 to 6 percent of the DNA in Europeans and Asians appears to be derived from Neanderthals.

Homo Rhodesiensis

Homo rhodesiensis, also known as Rhodesian man, was a hominid of the Genus Homo, whose fossil skull was discovered in Broken Hill Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia) in 1921 by Tom Zwiglaar, a Swiss miner. Rhodesian Man is dated to be between 125,000 and 300,000 years old. The cranial capacity of the Broken Hill skull has been estimated at 1,100 cm³.

The skull of Homo rhodesiensis belonged to an extremely robust individual, and has the comparatively largest brow-ridges of any known hominid remains. It was described as having a broad face similar to Homo neanderthalensis (ie. large nose and thick protruding brow ridges), and has been interpreted as an "African Neanderthal". However, when regarding the skulls extreme robustness, recent research has pointed to several features intermediate between modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthal. Most current experts believe Rhodesian Man to be within the group of Homo heidelbergensis though other designations such as Archaic Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens rhodesiensis have also been proposed. According to Tim White, it is probable that Rhodesian Man was the ancestor of Homo sapiens idaltu (Herto Man), which would be itself at the origin of Homo sapiens sapiens. No direct linkage of the species can so far be determined.

Other morphologically-comparable remains have been found from the same, or earlier, time period in southern Africa (Hopefield or Saldanha), East Africa (Bodo, Ndutu, Eyasi, Ileret) and North Africa (Salé, Rabat, Dar-es-Soltane, Djbel Irhoud, Sidi Aberrahaman, Tighenif). Another specimen "the hominid from Lake Ndutu" may approach 400,000 years old, and Clarke in 1976 classified it as Homo erectus. Undirect cranial capacity estimate is 1100 ml. Also supratoral sculus morphology and presence of protuberance as suggest Philip Rightmire : give the Nudutu occiput an apprence which is also unlike that of Homo Erectus but Stinger 1986 pointed that thickened iliac pillar is typical for Homo erectus.

Kenyanthropus Platyops

Kenyanthropus platyops was a type of hominid that lived in east Africa 3.2 million years ago, during the Pliocene. It was discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya in 1999 by Justus Erus, who was part of Meave Leakey's team. In 2001, Leakey theorized that the Kenyanthropus platyops fossil perhaps represented an entirely new hominine genus, while other anthropologists has classified it as a separate species of Australopithecus, Australopithecus platyops, and yet others interpret it as an individual of Australopithecus afarensis. This fossil found in Kenya features a broad flat face with a toe bone that suggests it probably walked upright. Teeth are intermediate between typical human and typical ape forms.

Homo Antecessor

Homo antecessor is an extinct species of Homo that dates from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago. A piece of fossil remains was discovered by Eudald Carbonell, J. L. Arsuaga and J. M. Bermúdez de Castro. It was a maxilla that belonged to a 10-year-old individual found in Spain. Homo antecessor is one of the earliest known human varieties in Europe. Various archaeologists and anthropologists have debated how H. antecessor related to other Homo species in Europe, with suggestions that it was an evolutionary link between H. ergaster and H. heidelbergensis, although Richard Klein believes that it was instead a separate species that evolved from H. ergaster. Others believe that H. antecessor is in fact the same species as H. heidelbergensis, who inhabited Europe from 600,000 to 250,000 years ago in the Pleistocene.

The average brain size of Homo antecessor was 1000 cm³ in volume. In 1994 and 1995, 80 fossils of six individuals that may have belonged to the species were found in Atapuerca, Spain. The fossils bore marks where the flesh had been torn off the bones, which indicates that H. antecessor could have practiced cannibalism. H. antecessor was about 1.6-1.8 m (5½-6 feet) tall, and males weighed roughly 90 kg (200 pounds). Their brain sizes ranged from 1000 to 1150 cm³ (61in³-70.2in³), smaller than the 1350 cm³ (82.4in³) average of modern humans. Due to its scarcity, very little more is known about the physiology of H. antecessor, yet it was likely to have been more robust than H. heidelbergensis.

According to Juan Luis Arsuaga, one of the co-directors of the excavation in Burgos, H. antecessor might have been right-handed, a trait that makes the species different to the other apes. This hypothesis is based on tomography techniques. Arsuaga also claims that the frequency range of audition is similar to Homo sapiens, which makes him believe that H. antecessor used a symbolic language and was able to reason. Arsuaga's team is currently pursuing a DNA map of H. antecessor after elucidating that of a bear that lived in northern Spain some 500,000 years ago.

Heidelberg Man

Heidelberg Man, also known as Homo heidelbergensis, is an archaic type of Homo sapiens (an extinct species of the genus Homo) which may be the direct ancestor of both Homo neanderthalensis in Europe and Cro-magnon. The best evidence found for these hominin date between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago. Heidelberg Man stone tool technology was very close to that of the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus.

It was discovered in 1907 by gravel pit workers near Heidelberg in Germany. The estimated age of Heidelberg Man is between 400,000 and 700,000 years. This find was a lower jaw with a receding chin and all its teeth. Although the jaw is large and robust, like that of Homo erectus, the teeth are at the small end of the erectus range.

Homo heidelbergensis is probably descended from the morphologically very similar Homo ergaster from Africa. But since Heidelberg Man had a larger cranium (cranial capacity of 1100–1400 cm³ overlapping the 1350 cm³ average of modern humans) and had more advanced tools and behavior, it has been given a separate species classification. The species was tall, 1.8 m (6 ft) on average, and more muscular than modern humans.

Recent findings in Atapuerca, Spain, suggest that Homo heidelbergensis may have been the first species of the Homo genus to bury their dead, even offering gifts. Some experts believe that Heidelberg Man, like its descendant H. neanderthalensis, had the brain capacity to produce and understand a type of language. Large temporal and frontal lobes are essential to produce and understand spoken language, and Heidelberg Man's were large enough. Well finished stone tools were uncovered at Terra Amata excavations in the south of France, along with red ochre, a mineral that can be used to create a red pigment which is useful as a paint.

Australopithecines

The australopithecines were hominids that belonged to genera Australopithecus or Paranthropus. These species occurred in the Plio-Pleistocene era, and were bipedal and dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than modern apes, lacking the encephalization characteristics of the genus Homo.

Australopithecines are classified within the Hominina subtribe of the Hominini tribe. Australopithecus appeared about 4 million years ago; Paranthropus, appeared about 2.7 million years ago. The term "Australopithecine" refers to both genera together. Australopithecus is sometimes referred to as the "gracile (slender) australopithecines", while Paranthropus are also called the "robust australopithecines".

The ancestor of the Australopithecines is the Ardipithecus genus, who lived 4.4 million years ago. The Homo genus appeared about 2.4 million years ago with Homo habilis and seems to be descended from australopithecine ancestors, more precisely from Kenyanthropus platyops branching off Australopithecus some 3.5 million years ago. An alternative possibility is the derivation of Homo directly from Ardipithecus with an as yet undiscovered link connecting Ardipithecus and Homo habilis existing in parallel to the Australopithecines in the period 4 to 2.5 million years ago.

Zinjanthropus Boisei

Paranthropus boisei, also known Zinjanthropus boisei, was an early type of hominid that was described as the largest of the Paranthropus species. It lived from about 2.6 until about 1.2 million years ago during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs in Eastern Africa.

Zinjanthropus boisei had the largest teeth found in any hominid group, with teeth similar in size to gorillas (who weigh as much as 10 times as much). They are often referred to as hyper-robust due to the massive postcanine megadontia. The features of boisei are best described in relation to the other "robusts" (including aethiopicus), since this best shows some of the features that exclude aethiopicus from the "robust" lineage in favor of africanus. Nevertheless, its cranial capacity was 550 cm3, larger than that of a modern gorilla.

Paranthropus b. was discovered by anthropologist Mary Leakey on July 17, 1959, at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, the well-preserved cranium, which was nicknamed "Nutcracker Man," was dated to 1.75 million years old and had characteristics distinctive of the robust australopithecines. Mary and her husband Louis Leakey classified the find as Zinjanthropus boisei: "Zinj" for the medieval East African region of Zanj, "anthropus" meaning ape or ape-human, and "boisei" for Charles Boise (the anthropologists team’s funder at the time).
Paranthropus boisei (as the species was eventually categorized) proved to be a treasure especially when the anthropologists' son Richard Leakey considered it to be the first hominin species to use stone tools. Another skull was unearthed in 1969 by Richard at Koobi Fora near the Lake Turkana region, in Kenya.

Homo Habilis

Homo habilis is a species of the genus Homo, which lived from approximately 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene period. The discovery and description of this species is credited to both Mary and Louis Leakey, who found fossils in Tanzania, East Africa, between 1962 and 1964. Homo habilis is the earliest known species of the genus Homo and the earliest known species to show novel differences from the chimpanzee and australopithid skulls. In its appearance and morphology, H. habilis is thus the least similar to modern humans of all species in the genus. Homo habilis was short and had disproportionately long arms compared to modern humans; however, it had a less protruding face than the australopithecines from which it is thought to have descended. H. habilis had a cranial capacity slightly less than half of the size of modern humans. Despite the ape-like morphology of the bodies, H. habilis remains have often been found along with primitive stone tools, such as in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania and Lake Turkana, and Kenya.

The jaw of Homo habilis is pulled under the brain, with smaller molars (though still much larger than in modern humans), and the skull is thinner, with a distinctive rounded shape, vertical sides and a small forehead above the brows. The first humans have arrived on the scene. A male habilis may have stood at around 1.3 meters and weighed 37 kilos, and females 1.2 meters and 32 kilos. However, some forms of habilis were apparently smaller, and may have stood little more than a meter tall.

Homo habilis has often been thought to be the ancestor of the more gracile and sophisticated Homo ergaster, which in turn gave rise to the more human-appearing species, Homo erectus. Debates continue over whether H. habilis is a direct human ancestor, and whether all of the known fossils are properly attributed to the species.

Homo habilis may have mastered the Olduwan era (Early Paleolithic) tool case which utilized stone flakes. These stone flakes were more advanced than any tools previously used, and gave H. habilis the edge it needed to prosper in hostile environments previously too formidable for primates. Whether H. habilis was the first hominin to master stone tool technology remains controversial, as Australopithecus garhi, dated to 2.6 million years ago, has been found along with stone tool implements at least 100,000 - 200,000 years older than H. habilis.

Most experts assume the intelligence and social organization of H. habilis were more sophisticated than typical australopithecines or chimpanzees. Yet despite tool usage, H. habilis was not the master hunter that its sister species (or descendants) proved to be, as there is ample fossil evidence that H. habilis was a staple in the diet of large predatory animals such as Dinofelis, a large scimitar-toothed predatory cat the size of a jaguar. H. habilis used tools primarily for scavenging, such as cleaving meat off carrion, rather than defense or hunting. Homo habilis is thought to be the ancestor of the lankier and more sophisticated Homo ergaster, which in turn gave rise to the more human-appearing species Homo erectus. Debates continue over whether H. habilis is a direct human ancestor, and whether all of the known fossils are properly attributed to the species.

Homo habilis co-existed with other Homo-like bipedal primates, such as Paranthropus boisei, some of which prospered for many millennia. However, H. habilis, possibly because of its early tool innovation and a less specialized diet, became the precursor of an entire line of new species, whereas Paranthropus boisei and its robust relatives disappeared from the fossil record.

Homo Erectus

Homo erectus is an extinct Genus of homo who originated in Africa and spread out as far as China and Java—from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about 1.8 to 1.3 million years ago. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of Homo erectus, with two major alternative hypotheses: erectus may be another name for Homo ergaster, and therefore the direct ancestor of later hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens; or it may be an Asian species distinct from African ergaster.

H. erectus originally migrated from Africa during the Early Pleistocene, possibly as a result of the operation of the Saharan pump, around 2.0 million years ago, and dispersed throughout much of the Old World. Fossilized remains 1.8 and 1.0 million years old have been found in Africa (Lake Turkana and Olduvai Gorge), Europe (Georgia, Spain), Indonesia, Vietnam, and China.
Dutch anatomist Eugene Dubois, who was fascinated especially by Darwin's theory of evolution as applied to man, set out to Asia to find a human ancestor in 1886. In 1891, his team discovered a human fossil on the island of Java, Indonesia. Dubois described the species as Pithecanthropus erectus, based on a calotte (skullcap) and a femur like that of H. sapiens found from the bank of the Solo River at Trinil, in East Java. This species is now regarded as Homo erectus. This find became known as Java Man.

Throughout much of the 20th century, anthropologists debated the role of Homo erectus in human evolution. Nevertheless, early in the century, due to discoveries on Java and at Zhoukoudian, it was believed that modern humans first evolved in Asia. Only a few naturalists, such as Charles Darwin, predicted that humans' earliest ancestors were African: he pointed out that chimpanzees and gorillas, obviously human relatives, live only in Africa.

From 1950s to 1970s, however, numerous fossil finds from East Africa yielded evidence that the oldest hominins originated there. It is now believed that H. erectus is a descendant of earlier genera such as Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, or early Homo Genuses, such as H. habilis or H. ergaster. H. habilis and H. erectus coexisted for several thousand years, and may represent separate lineages of a common ancestor.

Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints

Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, also called the Old Man, was a fossilized skull of a Neanderthal which was discovered in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France, by A. and J. Bouyssonie, and L. Bardon in 1908. The physical traits included a 1,600cm3-capacity cranium and heavy thick browridge typical of Neanderthals. Estimated to be about 60,000 years old, the specimen was severely arthritic and had lost all his teeth, with evidence of healing. For him to have lived on would have required that someone process his food for him, one of the earliest examples of Neanderthal altruism.

The remains of La Chapelle-aux-Saints were first studied by Marcellin Boule, whose reconstruction of Neandertal anatomy based on la Chapelle-aux-Saints material shaped popular perceptions of the Neandertals for over thirty years. The La Chapelle-aux-Saints specimen is typical of 'classic' Western European Neandertal anatomy.

This specimen had lost many of his teeth, with evidence of healing. All of the mandibular molars were absent and consequently, some researchers suggested that the 'Old Man' would have needed someone to process his food for him. This was widely cited as an example of Neanderthal altruism, similar to Shanidar 1. However, later studies have shown that La Chapelle-aux-Saints had a number of incisors, canines and premolars in place and therefore would have been able to chew his own food, although perhaps with some difficulty.

Brain Growth Mirrors Human Evolution

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that the human brain regions that grow the most during infancy and childhood are nearly identical to the brain regions with the most changes when the human cerebrum are compared to those of apes and monkeys. Researchers report the finding in a detailed comparison of the brains of normal-term infants and healthy young adults published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists conducted the study to help assess the long-term effects of premature birth on brain development. These can include increased risks of learning disabilities, attention deficits, behavioral problems and cognitive impairments.

"Pre-term births have been rising in recent years, and now 12 percent of all babies in the United States are born prematurely," says Terrie Inder, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics. "Until now, though, we were very limited in our ability to study how premature birth affects brain development because we had so little data on what normal brain development looks like."

Among the questions Inder and her colleagues hope to answer is the extent to which the brain can adapt to developmental limitations or setbacks imposed by early birth. They are also helping to develop clinical strategies to promote such adaptations and normalize development.

The study used a technique for comparative brain anatomy called surface reconstruction pioneered by senior author David Van Essen, PhD, Edison Professor and head of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology. Surface reconstruction helps scientists more closely align comparable regions and structures in many different brains and has been used to create online atlases of brain structure.

First author Jason Hill, an MD/PhD student, analyzed the brain scans of 12 full-term infants and compared these to scans from 12 healthy young adults. Data from the two groups were combined into a single atlas to help scientists quantify the differences between the infant and young-adult brains.

They found that the cerebral cortex, the wrinkled area on the surface of the brain responsible for higher mental functions, grows in an uneven fashion. Every region expands as the brain matures, but one-quarter to one-third of the cortex expands approximately twice as much as other cortical areas during normal development.

"Through comparisons between humans and macaque monkeys, my lab previously showed that many of these high-growth regions are expanded in humans as a result of recent evolutionary changes that made the human brain much larger than that of any other primate," says Van Essen. "The correlation isn't perfect, but it's much too good to put down to chance."

The high-growth regions are areas linked to advanced mental functions such as language, reasoning, and what Van Essen calls "the abilities that make us uniquely human." He speculates that the full physical growth of these regions may be delayed somewhat to allow them to be shaped by early life experiences.

Inder notes another potential explanation for the different development rates: the limitations on brain size imposed by the need to pass through the mother's pelvis at birth may force the brain to prioritize.

"Vision, for example, is a brain area that is important at birth so an infant can nurse and learn to recognize his or her parents," Inder says. "Other areas of the brain, less important very early in life, may be the regions that see greater growth as the child matures."

Researchers are currently conducting similar scans of premature babies at birth and years later.
"This study and the data that we're gathering now could provide us with very powerful tools for understanding what goes wrong structurally in a wide range of childhood disorders, from the aftereffects of premature birth to conditions like autism, attention-deficit disorder or reading disabilities," Inder says.

Source: Science Daily

Neanderthal's Vocal Tract

Dr. Robert McCarthy, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, has reconstructed a vocal tract that simulates the sound of the Neanderthal voice.

Using 50,000-year-old fossils from France and a computer synthesizer, McCarthy’s team has generated a recording of how a Neanderthal would pronounce the letter “e.” The brief recording doesn’t sound like any letter in modern languages, but McCarthy says that’s because Neanderthals lacked the “quantal vowels” modern humans use. Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another.

“They would have spoken a bit differently,” McCarthy said at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio in April. “They wouldn't have been able to produce these quantal vowels that form the basis of spoken language.”

Though quantal vowels make subtle differences in speech, their absence would have limited Neanderthal speech. For example, Neanderthals would not be able to distinguish between the words ‘beat’ and ‘bit.’

For scientists, McCarthy’s work represents an exploration of life 30,000 years ago when Neanderthal humans, our closest extinct ancestor, lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. The species died out mysteriously some 28,000 years ago.

Australopithecus Anamensis

Australopithecus anamensis was a species of hominid that inhabited east Africa approximately four million years ago. Nearly one hundred fossil specimens are known from Kenya and Ethiopia, representing over 20 individuals. The first fossilized specimen of the species was a single arm bone found in Pliocene strata in the Kanapoi region of East Lake Turkana by a Harvard University research team in 1965. The specimen was tentatively assigned at the time to Australopithecus and dated about four million years old.

In 1995, Meave Leakey and her associates, taking note of differences between Australopithecus afarensis and the new finds, assigned them to a new species, A. anamensis, deriving its name from the Turkana word anam, meaning "lake". Leakey determined that this species was independent of many others. It does not represent an intermediate species of any type. In 2006, a new A. anamensis find was officially announced, extending the range of A. anamensis into north east Ethiopia. These new fossils, sampled from a woodland context, include the largest hominid canine tooth yet recovered and the earliest Australopithecus femur.

Origin of Australopithecus

The origin of Australopithecus, the genus which is widely regarded as ancestral to Homo, is a central problem in human evolutionary studies. Australopithecus species differ considerably from extant African apes and candidate ancestral hominids such as Ardipithecus, Orrorin and Sahelanthropus.

The earliest described Australopithecus species is Australopithecus anamensis, which would be its origin and the probable chronospecies ancestor of Au. afarensis. Here we describe newly discovered fossils from the Middle Awash study area that extend the known Au. anamensis range into northeastern Ethiopia. The new fossils are from chronometrically controlled stratigraphic sequences and date to about 4.1–4.2 million years ago.

They include diagnostic craniodental remains, the largest hominid canine yet recovered, and the earliest Australopithecus femur. These new fossils are sampled from a woodland context. Temporal and anatomical intermediacy between Ar. ramidus and Au. afarensis suggest a relatively rapid shift from Ardipithecus to Australopithecus in this region of Africa, involving either replacement or accelerated phyletic evolution.

Australopithecus Afarensis

Australopithecus afarensis was a type of hominid which belonged to the genus Australopithecus and lived between 3.7 and 2.9 million years ago. Australopithecus afarensis was slenderly built, like the younger Australopithecus africanus. It is thought that A. afarensis was ancestral to both the genus Australopithecus and the genus Homo, which includes the modern human species, Homo sapiens. The most famous fossil is the partial skeleton named Lucy (3.2 million years old) by Donald Johanson and colleagues, after they played the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds over and over in celebration of their find.

Compared to the modern and extinct great apes, A. afarensis has reduced canines and molars, although they are still relatively larger than in modern humans. A. afarensis also has a relatively small brain size (~380–430 cm³). The image of a bipedal hominin with a small brain and primitive face was quite a revelation to the paleoanthropological world at the time. This was due to the earlier belief that an increase in brain size was the first major hominin adaptive shift.

Australopithecus afarensis fossils have only been discovered within northern Africa. Despite Laetoli being the type locality for A. afarensis, the most extensive remains assigned to this species are found in Hadar, Afar Region of Ethiopia, including the above-mentioned "Lucy" partial skeleton and the "First Family" found at the A.L. 333 locality. Other localities bearing A. afarensis remains include Omo, Maka, Fejej and Belohdelie in Ethiopia, and Koobi Fora and Lothagam in Kenya.

Selam (Australopithecus Afarensis)

Selam is the name given to a fossilized skull and other skeletal remains of a 3-year-old Australopithecus afarensis female whose bones were first found in Dikika, Ethiopia in 2000 and recovered over the following years. She is often nicknamed Lucy's baby. The remains of Selam have been dated at 3.3 mya, approximately 120,000 years older than "Lucy" (dated to about 3.18 Ma). The fossils were discovered by Zeresenay Alemseged, and are remarkable for both their age and completeness.

On September 20, 2006, the journal Nature presented the findings of a dig in Dikika, Ethiopia a few miles south (across the Awash River) from Hadar, the place where the fossil remains known as Lucy was found. The recovered skeleton comprises almost the entire skull and torso, and many parts of the limbs. The features of the skeleton suggest adaptation to walking upright (bipedalism) as well as tree-climbing, features that correspond well with the skeletal features of Lucy and other specimens of Australopithecus afarensis from Ethiopia and Tanzania. "Lucy's Baby" has officially been nicknamed "Selam" (meaning "peace").

Australopithecus

Australopithecus was a genus of hominids that evolved in eastern Africa around 4 million years ago before spreading throughout the continent and eventually becoming extinct 2 million years ago. During this time period various different forms of australopiths existed, including Australopithecus anamensis, A. afarensis, A. sediba, and A. africanus. There is still some debate amongst academics whether certain African hominid species of this time, such as A. robustus and A. boisei constitute members of the same genus; if so, they would be considered to be robust australopiths whilst the others would be considered gracile australopiths. However, if these species do indeed constitute their own genus, then they may be given their own name, the Paranthropus.

It is widely held by archaeologists and palaeontologists that the australopithecus played a significant part in human evolution and it was one of the australopith species that eventually evolved into the Homo genus in Africa around 2 million years ago, which contained within it species like Homo habilis, H. ergaster and eventually the modern human species, H. sapiens sapiens.

The brains of most species of Australopithecus were roughly 35% of the size of that of a modern human brain. Most species of Australopithecus were diminutive and gracile, usually standing between 1.2 to 1.4 m tall (approx. 4 to 4.5 feet). In several variations of Australopithecus there is a considerable degree of sexual dimorphism, in this case males are larger than females. Modern hominids do not appear to display sexual dimorphism to the same degree — particularly, modern humans display a low degree of sexual dimorphism, with males being only 15% larger than females, on average. In Australopithecus, however, males can be up to 50% larger than females. New research suggests that sexual dimorphism may be less pronounced than this, but there is still debate on the subject.

Neanderthal Man

The Neanderthal, or Neandertal, was a species of Homo (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) who lived in Europe and parts of western Asia from about 250,000 to 29,000 years ago, during the Middle Paleolithic period. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 600,000–350,000 years ago. Proto-Neanderthal traits are occasionally grouped to another species, Homo heidelbergensis.

In 2010, current genetic evidence suggests interbreeding took place with Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans) between roughly 80,000 to 50,000 years ago in the Middle East, resulting in Caucasians and Asians having between 1% and 6% more Neanderthal DNA than indigenous sub-Saharan Africans. Specimens with combined Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal traits have also been found in Spain as recently as 40,000 BC suggesting long term and widespread intermingling of "anachronistic races" throughout history.

Neanderthal cranial capacity is thought to have been as large as that of Homo sapiens, in some cases larger, ranging from 1,500 cm3 to 1,650 cm3 (modern human 1,425-1,450 cm3). In 2008, a group of scientists created a study using three-dimensional computer-assisted reconstructions of Neanderthal infants based on fossils found in Russia and Syria, showing that they had brains as large as modern humans' at birth and larger than modern humans' as adults. On average, the height of Neanderthals was comparable to contemporaneous Homo sapiens. Neanderthal males stood about 165–168 cm (65–66 in), and were heavily built with robust bone structure. They were much stronger than Homo sapiens, having particularly strong arms and hands.

The Neanderthal is named after the Neanderthal valley, which is situated about 12 km (7.5 mi) east of Düsseldorf, Germany. The valley itself was named after the theologian Joachim Neander, who lived nearby in Düsseldorf in the late 17th century. The fossil discovered in the Neandertal in 1856, Neanderthal 1, was known as the "Neanderthal skull" or "Neanderthal cranium" in anthropological literature, and the individual reconstructed on the basis of the skull was occasionally called the "Neanderthal man."

Early Neanderthals lived in the Last Glacial age for a span of about 100,000 years. Because of the damaging effects the glacial period had on the Neanderthal sites, not much is known about the early species. Countries where their remains are known include most of Europe south of the line of glaciation, roughly along the 50th parallel north, including most of Western Europe, including the south coast of Great Britain, Central Europe and the Balkans, some sites in the Ukraine and in western Russia and outside of Europe in the Zagros Mountains and in the Levant.

Neanderthal fossils have to date not been found in Africa, but there have been finds rather close to Africa, both at Gibraltar and in the Levant. At some Levantine sites, Neanderthal remains in fact date after the same sites were vacated by Homo sapiens. Mammal fossils of the same time period show that cold-adapted animals were present alongside these Neanderthals in this region of the Eastern Mediterranean. This implies Neanderthals were better adapted biologically to cold weather than modern Homo sapiens and at times displaced modern Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon) in parts of the Middle East when the climate got cold enough. Cro-Magnon appears to have been the only human type in the Nile River Valley during these periods, and Neanderthals are not known to have ever lived southwest of modern Israel.

Primeval Britons Were Earliest North Europeans

— A University College London archaeologist is part of a team who have unearthed the earliest evidence of human occupation in Britain. Simon Parfitt was part of a team of archaeologists, palaeontologists and earth scientists from the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, UCL, and Queen Mary, University of London, who unearthed the new evidence at an archaeological dig in East Anglia.

Their findings demonstrate that ancient humans occupied Britain over 800,000 years ago, marking the first known settlement in northern Europe -- far earlier than previously thought. The excavation was funded by the British Museum and the work forms part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, which is funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

The research, published in this week's issue of the scientific journal Nature, reveals over 70 flint tools and flakes excavated on the foreshore at Happisburgh, Norfolk. Mr Parfitt, who is based at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, said: "This challenges our views that early humans spread only during periods of exceptional warmth. Instead, the new evidence demonstrates that early humans were capable of adapting their behaviour as the world changed around them."

Until recently, humans living during this early period in Europe were thought to be confined to the area south of the Pyrenees and Alps, and the earliest finds in Britain were dated from sites like Boxgrove, Sussex, at about 500,000 years. However, in 2005 evidence from Pakefield, Suffolk, indicated that humans had managed to reach Britain about 700,000 years ago, when for a brief period the climate was comparable with that of the Mediterranean today. The findings from Happisburgh extend this record of human presence in Britain even further back in time.

Tools found at Happisburgh provide the first record of Early Pleistocene human occupation on the edges of the cooler -- or 'boreal' -- northern forests of Eurasia. Living near these forests would have presented a range of new challenges to the people living there. Much of northern Europe was covered with boreal forests, which grew and shrank with the ebb and flow of the ice ages. Edible plants and animals were few and far between, and short winter daylight hours and severe winters exacerbated the already tough living conditions that our predecessors faced.

The evidence from Happisburgh indicates that the site lay on an ancient course of the River Thames. This large tidal river would have had freshwater pools and marshes on its floodplain, together with salt marsh and coast nearby.

Mr Parfitt, co-director of the dig in Happisburgh, added: ''The flood plain would have been dominated by grass, supporting a diverse range of herbivores, such as mammoth, rhino and horse. Predators would have included hyaenas, sabre-toothed cats and of course humans.

"The site is exceptional because of the unprecedented preservation of the original materials, from pollen grains to chunks of wood, and mammoth bones to voles and mice. We've even found remains of beetles and plants, which are missing from other sites. What we have in Happisburgh is a complete buried landscape."

(From Science Daily)

Peking Man

Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis) was a type of Homo erectus. A group of fossil specimens was discovered between 1923 and 1927 during excavations at Zhoukoudian (Chou K'ou-tien) near Peking (now Beijing), China. The finds were then dated from roughly 800,000 years ago, although a new 26Al/10Be dating suggests they may be as much as 680,000-780,000 years old. Between 1929 and 1937, 15 partial craniums, 11 lower jaws, many teeth, some skeletal bones and large numbers of stone tools were discovered in the Lower Cave at Locality 1 of the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, in China. Their age is estimated to be between 500,000 and 300,000 years old. The fossil skull discovered at Locus E in 1929 was an adolescent or juvenile with a brain size of 915 cc. The skull II, discovered at Locus D in 1929 but only recognized in 1930, was an adult or adolescent with a brain size of 1030 cc.