Question

• Which genus of primate was found in the Fayum
• The species and genus names of Miocene hominoids
• The various hypotheses on why bipedalism is advantageous
• What the Laetoli footprints tell us about bipedalism
• Define paleoanthropology
• Know the relative dating methods
• Carbon 14 dating – up to how old can we date materials with this method?
• The name of the oldest hominid yet found
• Know why these sites are important: Hadar, Olduvai Gorge, Omo, Lake Turkana
• What makes members of the genus Homo unique from all other hominids that came before
• Where Homo erectus fossils have been found
• How long Homo erectus existed
• Why the fossils at the site of Dmanisi are peculiar
• Know what Homo ergaster is and where it is found
• Know the terms associated with describing a Homo erectus and a Neanderthal cranium
• Know what a grade is

Answer 1

#1. Aegyptopithhecus, a propliopithecid genus from the Oligocene, probably ancestral to catarrhines; the largest primate found in the Fayum, Egypt. Aegyptopithecus was discovered by Elwyn Simons in 1965 in the Gabal (Egyptian Arabic for Jebel) Qatrani Formation, located in the Faiyum Governorate of central Egypt.

#2. Middle and Late Miocene taxa are clearly hominoids, and by the end of the Middle Miocene most can be attributed to either the pongine (Pongo) or hominine (African ape and human) clade

#3. The host of advantages bipedalism brought meant that all future hominid species would carry this trait. Human bipedalism is very efficient at normal walking speeds, because forward motion results from gravity swinging each leg forward like a pendulum. Bipedalism allowed hominids to free their arms completely, enabling them to make and use tools efficiently, stretch for fruit in trees and use their hands for social display and communication.

#4. The Laetoli footprints provide a clear snapshot of an early hominin bipedal gait that probably involved a limb posture that was slightly but significantly different from our own, and these data support the hypothesis that important evolutionary changes to hominin bipedalism occurred within the past 3.66 million years ago.

#5. Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of archaeology with a human focus, which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae, working from biological evidence and cultural evidence .

#6. Relative dating is used to arrange geological events, and the rocks they leave behind, in a sequence, without necessarily determining their absolute age.

#7. the half-life of 14C is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to around 50,000 years ago, although special preparation methods occasionally permit accurate analysis of older samples.

#8. The earliest known Ardipithecus — A. ramidus kadabba — lived around 5.8 million years ago in Ethiopia.

#11. The ancient ancestor of modern humans lived from 2 million years ago till about 100,000 years ago, possibly even 50,000 years ago. Fossils of H. erectus also show that the species lived in numerous locales across the globe, including South Africa, Kenya, Spain, China, and Java (Indonesia).

#12. Dmanisi archaeological site in Georgia — famed as the location of the oldest hominin fossils to be found outside Africa.

#13. Remains have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa. But the most complete Homo ergaster skeleton ever discovered was made at Lake Turkana, Kenya in 1984. Paleanthropologists Richard Leakey, Kamoya Kimeu and Tim White dubbed the 1.6 million year old specimen as KNM-WT 15000 (nicknamed "Turkana Boy").