Virtually every section in the first part of The Descent of Man foreshadows an area of anthropology or biology that has independently flowered since; and in this way, Darwin wrote much of the agenda that was to be followed by paleoanthropology and primatology over the next century and a half’ The increased amount of oxygen causes many eukaryotes, including most animals, to become obligate aerobes.

Evolutionman

The remains of the Neanderthal man from the late Pleistocene bed (before or during the first Ice Age) were first discovered in Spain and North Africa to Ethiopia, Mesopotamia., Gibraltar, Neanderthal Valley near Dusseldorf (Germany), Southern Russia from 1848-1861. Boundless World History. Authored by: Boundless. Located at: https://www.boundless.com/world-history/textbooks/boundless-world-history-textbook/. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike The long evolutionary journey that created modern humans began with a single step—or more accurately—with the ability to walk on two legs. One of our earliest-known ancestors, Sahelanthropus, began the slow transition from ape-like movement some six million years ago, but Homo sapiens wouldn’t show up for more than five million years. During that long interim, a menagerie of different human species lived, evolved and died out, intermingling and sometimes interbreeding along the way. As time went on, their bodies changed, as did their brains and their ability to think, as seen in their tools and technologies. The bipedal australopithecines (a genus of the subtribe Hominina) evolve in the savannas of Africa being hunted by Megantereon. Loss of body hair occurs from 3 to 2 Ma, in parallel with the development of full bipedalism and slight enlargement of the brain. [35] Even as they acquired the more modern anatomy seen in living humans, the ways our ancestors lived, and the tools they created, changed as well.Homo is the genus (group of species) that includes modern humans, like us, and our most closely related extinct ancestors. Organisms that belong to the same species produce viable offspring. The famous paleoanthropologist named Louis Leakey, along with his team, discovered Homo habilis (meaning handy man) in 1964. Homo habilis was the most ancient species of Homo ever found [ 2]. Homo habilis appeared in Tanzania (East Africa) over 2.8 million years ago, and 1.5 million years ago became exinct. They were estimated to be about 1.40 meter tall and were terrestrial. They were different from Australopithecus because of the form of the skull. The shape was not piriform (pear-shaped), but spheroid (round), like the head of a modern human. Homo habilis made stone tools, a sign of creativity [ 3]. the ancestor that amphibians share with reptiles and ourselves?" "These possibly transitional fossils have been much studied, among them Acanthostega, which seems to have been wholly aquatic, and Ichthyostega" Richard Dawkins 2004 The Ancestor's Tale p. 250, ISBN 0-618-00583-8 Larger brain size, also called encephalization, began in early humans with Homo habilis and continued through the Neanderthal line (capacity of 1,200 – 1,900 cm3). The ability of the human brain to continue to grow after birth meant that social learning and language were possible. It is possible that a focus on eating meat, and cooking, allowed for brain growth. Modern humans have a brain volume of 1250 cm3. Renne, Paul R.; Deino, Alan L.; Hilgen, Frederik J.; Kuiper, Klaudia F.; Mark, Darren F.; Mitchell, William S.; Morgan, Leah E.; Mundil, Roland; Smit, Jan (7 February 2013). "Time Scales of Critical Events Around the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary". Science. 339 (6120): 684–87. Bibcode: 2013Sci...339..684R. doi: 10.1126/science.1230492. PMID 23393261. S2CID 6112274.

Human Evolution – the facts | National Geographic

Writing on argil support showed changes from pictograms to abstract design. Picture modified from British Museum. Dates in year BC. Catarrhini splits into 2 superfamilies, Old World monkeys (Cercopithecoidea) and apes ( Hominoidea). Human trichromatic color vision had its genetic origins in this period. Catarrhines lost the vomeronasal organ (or possibly reduced it to vestigial status).

Gerling, C., Doppler, T., Heyd, V., Knipper, C., Kuhn, T., Lehmann, M. F., et al. 2017. High-resolution isotopic evidence of specialised cattle herding in the European Neolithic. PLoS ONE 12:e0180164. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0180164 Two key models have been put forward to explain the evolution of human beings, mainly the Homo sapiens, namely the ‘out of Africa’ model and the ‘multi-regional’ model. The ‘out of Africa’ model at present is the most accepted model. It proposes that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa before they migrated across the world.

Evolution for Young Minds A Brief Account of Human Evolution for Young Minds

The 160,000-year-old skulls of two adults and a child at Herto, Ethiopia, were classified as the subspecies Homo sapiens idaltu because of slight morphological differences including larger size. But they are otherwise so similar to modern humans that some argue they aren’t a subspecies at all. A skull discovered at Ngaloba, Tanzania, also considered Homo sapiens, represents a 120,000-year-old individual with a mix of archaic traits and more modern aspects like smaller facial features and a further reduced brow. Richter, D., Grun, R., Joannes-Boyau, R., Steele, T. E., Amani, F., Rue, M., et al. 2017. The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature 546:293–6. doi: 10.1038/nature22335 Fossils attributed to H. sapiens, along with stone tools, dated to approximately 300,000 years ago, found at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco [50] yield the earliest fossil evidence for anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The fossils of anthropoids of the Miocene period show considerable diversity with some possessing pre-human features. They may have evolved into the human line and others leading towards the great apes. Dryopithecus, an anthropoid fossil, is regarded to stand close to the point of divergence.A separate species, Homo neanderthalensis, had a common ancestor with humans about 660,000 years ago, and engaged in interbreeding with Homo sapiens about 45,000 to 80,000 years ago. Although their brains were larger, Neanderthals had fewer social and technological innovations than humans, and they eventually died out. Theories of Early Human Evolution