Paleoanthropology, which combines the disciplines of
paleontologyPaleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
and
physical anthropologyBiological anthropology is that branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology and in forensic anthropology...
, is the study of ancient humans as found in
fossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
hominidThe Hominidae or include them .), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees , gorillas , humans , and orangutans ....
evidence such as
petrifactedIn geology, petrifaction, petrification or silicification is the process by which organic material is converted into stone by impregnation with silica. It is a rare form of fossilization...
bones and footprints.
19th century
The science arguably began in the late 19th century when important discoveries occurred that led to the study of
human evolutionHuman evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
. The discovery of the
NeanderthalThe Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
,
Thomas HuxleyThomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....
's
Evidence as to Man's Place in NatureEvidence as to Man's Place in Nature is an 1863 book by Thomas Henry Huxley, in which he gives evidence for the evolution of man and apes from a common ancestor. It was the first book devoted to the topic of human evolution, and discussed much of the anatomical and other evidence...
, and
Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's
The Descent of Man were all important to early paleoanthropological research.
The modern field of paleoanthropology began in the 19th century with the discovery of "
NeanderthalThe Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...
man" (the eponymous skeleton was found in 1856, but there had been finds elsewhere since 1830), and with evidence of so-called
cave menA caveman or troglodyte is a stock character based upon widespread concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans may have looked and behaved...
. The idea that humans are similar to certain great apes had been obvious to people for some time, but the idea of the biological evolution of species in general was not legitimized until after
Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
published
On the Origin of Species in 1859.
Though Darwin's first book on evolution did not address the specific question of human evolution— "light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history," was all Darwin wrote on the subject— the implications of evolutionary theory were clear to contemporary readers.
Debates between
Thomas HuxleyThomas Henry Huxley PC FRS was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution....
and
Richard OwenSir Richard Owen, FRS KCB was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...
focused on the idea of human evolution. Huxley convincingly illustrated many of the similarities and differences between humans and apes in his 1863 book
Evidence as to Man's Place in NatureEvidence as to Man's Place in Nature is an 1863 book by Thomas Henry Huxley, in which he gives evidence for the evolution of man and apes from a common ancestor. It was the first book devoted to the topic of human evolution, and discussed much of the anatomical and other evidence...
. By the time Darwin published his own book on the subject,
Descent of Man, it was already a well-known interpretation of his theory— and the interpretation which made the theory highly controversial. Even many of Darwin's original supporters (such as
Alfred Russel WallaceAlfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist...
and
Charles LyellSir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...
) balked at the idea that human beings could have evolved their apparently boundless mental capacities and moral sensibilities through
natural selectionNatural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
.
Earlier
Since the time of Carl Linnaeus, the great apes were considered the closest relatives of human beings, based on morphological similarity. In the 19th century, it was speculated that the closest living relatives to humans were
chimpanzeeChimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
s and
gorillaGorillas are the largest extant species of primates. They are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and either four or five subspecies...
s, and based on the natural range of these creatures, it was surmised that humans shared a common ancestor with
AfricaAfrica is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n apes and that
fossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
s of these ancestors would ultimately be found in Africa.
Asia
Prior to today's general acceptance of Africa as the root of genus
Homo, 19th century naturalists sought the origin of man in Asia. So-called "dragon bones" (fossil bones and teeth) from Chinese apothecary shops were known, but it was not until the early 20th century that German paleontologist,
Max SchlosserMax Schlosser was a German zoologist and paleontologist. He is best known for his research about extinct primates and Caniformia.-External links:* from Scribd...
, first described a single human tooth from
BeijingBeijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
. Although Schlosser (1903) was very cautious, identifying the tooth only as “?
Anthropoide g. et sp. indet?,” he was hopeful that future work would discover a new anthropoid in China.
Eleven years later, the Swedish geologist
Johan Gunnar AnderssonJohan Gunnar Andersson , Swedish archaeologist, paleontologist and geologist, closely associated with the beginnings of Chinese archaeology in the 1920s...
was sent to China as a mining advisor and soon developed an interest in “dragon bones”. It was he who, in 1918, discovered the sites around
ZhoukoudianZhoukoudian or Choukoutien is a cave system in Beijing, China. It has yielded many archaeological discoveries, including one of the first specimens of Homo erectus, dubbed Peking Man, and a fine assemblage of bones of the gigantic hyena Pachycrocuta brevirostris...
, a village about 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing. However, because of the sparse nature of the initial finds, the site was abandoned.
Work did not resume until 1921, when the Austrian paleontologist,
Otto ZdanskyOtto A. Zdansky was an Austrian paleontologist.He is best known for his work in China, where he, as an assistant to Johan Gunnar Andersson, discovered a fossil tooth of the Peking Man in 1921 at the Dragon Bone Hill, although he did not disclose it until 1926 when he published it in Nature after...
, fresh with his doctoral degree from Vienna, came to Beijing to work for Andersson. Zdansky conducted short-term excavations at Locality 1 in 1921 and 1923, and recovered only two teeth of significance (one premolar and one molar) that he subsequently described, cautiously, as “?
Homo sp.” (Zdansky, 1927). With that done, Zdansky returned to Austria and suspended all fieldwork.
News of the fossil hominin teeth delighted the scientific community in Beijing, and plans for developing a larger, more systematic project at Zhoukoudian were soon formulated. At the epicenter of excitement was
Davidson BlackDavidson Black, FRS was a Canadian paleoanthropologist, best known for his naming of Sinanthropus pekinensis . He was Chairman of the Geological Survey of China and a Fellow of the Royal Society...
, a Canadian-born anatomist working at
Peking Union Medical CollegePeking Union Medical College is among the most selective medical colleges in the People's Republic of China and is renowned both in its own right and for being connected to one of China's most prestigious institutions of higher learning.-History:...
. Black shared Andersson’s interest, as well as his view that central Asia was a promising home for early humankind. In late 1926, Black submitted a proposal to the
Rockefeller FoundationThe Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
seeking financial support for systematic excavation at Zhoukoudian and the establishment of an institute for the study of human biology in China.
The Zhoukoudian Project came into existence in the spring of 1927, and two years later, the
Cenozoic Research LaboratoryThe Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China was established at the Peking Union Medical College in 1928 by Canadian paleoanthropologist Davidson Black and Chinese geologists Ding Wenjing and Weng Wenhao for the research and appraisal of Peking Man fossils unearthed at...
of the Geological Survey of China was formally established. Being the first institution of its kind, the Cenozoic Laboratory opened up new avenues for the study of paleogeology and paleontology in China. The Laboratory was the precursor of the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and PaleoanthropologyThe Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of China is a prominent research institution and collections repository for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaurand cat poo specimens...
(IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Science, which took its modern form after 1949.
The first of the major project finds are attributed to the young Swedish paleontologist, Anders Birger Bohlin, then serving as the field advisor at Zhoukoudian. He recovered a left lower molar that Black (1927) identified as unmistakably human (it compared favorably to the previous find made by Zdansky), and subsequently coined it
Sinanthropus pekinensis. The news was at first met with skepticism, and many scholars had reservations that a single tooth was sufficient to justify the naming of a new type of early hominin. Yet within a little more than two years, in the winter of 1929,
Pei WenzhongPei Wenzhong was a Chinese paleontologist, archaeologist and anthropologist. Professor Pei is considered the founding father of Chinese anthropology....
, then the field director at Zhoukoudian, unearthed the first complete calvaria of
Peking ManPeking Man , Homo erectus pekinensis, is an example of Homo erectus. A group of fossil specimens was discovered in 1923-27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing , China...
. Twenty-seven years after Schlosser’s initial description, the antiquity of early humans in East Asia was no longer a speculation, but a reality.
Excavations continued at the site and remained fruitful until the outbreak of the
Second Sino-Japanese WarThe Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
in 1937. The decade-long research yielded a wealth of faunal and lithic materials, as well as hominin fossils. These included 5 more complete calvaria, 9 large cranial fragments, 6 facial fragments, 14 partial mandibles, 147 isolated teeth, and 11 postcranial elements - estimated to represent as least 40 individuals. Evidence of fire, marked by ash lenses and burned bones and stones, were apparently also present, although recent studies have challenged this view.
Franz Weidenreich-External references:*...
came to Beijing soon after Black’s untimely death in 1934, and took charge of the study of the hominin specimens.
Following the loss of the Peking Man materials in late 1941, scientific endeavors at Zhoukoudian slowed, primarily because of lack of funding. Frantic search for the missing fossils took place, and continued well into the 1950s. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, excavations resumed at Zhoukoudian. But with political instability and social unrest brewing in China, beginning in 1966, and major discoveries at
Olduvai GorgeThe Olduvai Gorge is a steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches through eastern Africa. It is in the eastern Serengeti Plains in northern Tanzania and is about long. It is located 45 km from the Laetoli archaeological site...
and East Turkana (
Koobi ForaKoobi Fora refers primarily to a region around Koobi Fora Ridge, located on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana in the territory of the nomadic Gabbra people. According to the National Museums of Kenya, the name comes from the Gabbra language:...
), the paleoanthropological spotlight shifted westward to East Africa. Although China re-opened its doors to the West in the late 1970s, national policy calling for self-reliance, coupled with a widened language barrier, thwarted all the possibilities of renewed scientific relationships. Indeed, Harvard anthropologist K. C. Chang noted, “international collaboration (in developing nations very often a disguise for Western domination) became a thing of the past” (1977: 139).
Africa
In South Africa, a notable and rare find came to light in 1924. In a limestone quarry at Taung, Professor
Raymond DartRaymond Arthur Dart was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil ever found of Australopithecus africanus, an extinct hominid closely related to humans, at Taung in the North of South Africa in the province...
discovered a remarkably well-preserved juvenile specimen (face and brain endocast), which he named
Australopithecus africanusAustralopithecus africanus was an early hominid, an australopithecine, who lived between 2–3 million years ago in the Pliocene. In common with the older Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus was slenderly built, or gracile, and was thought to have been a direct ancestor of modern humans. Fossil...
. (
Australopithecus = Southern Ape). Although the brain was small (410 cm³), its shape was rounded, unlike that of chimpanzees and gorillas, and more like a modern human brain. In addition, the specimen exhibited short
canine teethIn mammalian oral anatomy, the canine teeth, also called cuspids, dogteeth, fangs, or eye teeth, are relatively long, pointed teeth...
, and the
foramen magnum was more anteriorly placed, suggesting a bipedal mode of locomotion.
All of these traits convinced Dart that the Taung child was a bipedal human ancestor, a transitional form between ape and man. Another 20 years passed before Dart's claims were taken seriously, following the discovery of additional australopith fossils in Africa that resembled his specimen. The prevailing view of the time was that a large brain evolved before bipedality. It was thought that intelligence on par with modern humans was a prerequisite to bipedalism.
The factors that drove human evolution are still the subject of controversy. Dart's savanna hypothesis suggested that bipedalism was caused by a move to the savanna for hunting. However recent evidence suggests that bipedalism existed before the savannas. Several anthropologists, such as Bernard Wood, Kevin Hunt and Philip Tobias, have pronounced the savanna theory defunct. The
aquatic ape hypothesisThe aquatic ape hypothesis is an alternative explanation of some characteristics of human evolution which hypothesizes that the common ancestors of modern humans spent a period of time adapting to life in a partially aquatic environment. The hypothesis is based on differences between humans and...
, developed in response to the perceived flaws of the savanna hypothesis, suggests that wading, swimming and diving for food exerted a strong evolutionary effect on the ancestors of the genus
Homo and is in part responsible for the split between the
common ancestorsIn evolutionary biology, a group of organisms share common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong quantitative support for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor....
of humans and other great apes. It is not well accepted by most researchers in paleoanthropology.
Today, the australopiths are considered to be the last common ancestors leading to genus
Homo, the group to which modern humans belong. Both australopiths and
Homo sapiens are part of the tribe
HomininiHominini is the tribe of Homininae that comprises Homo, and the two species of the genus Pan , their ancestors, and the extinct lineages of their common ancestor . Members of the tribe are called hominins...
, but recent morphological data have brought into doubt the position of
A. africanus as a direct ancestor of modern humans.
The australopiths were originally grouped based on size as either
gracileThe English word "gracile" means slender. It derives from the Latin adjective gracilis , or gracile which in either form means slender, and when transferred for example to discourse, takes the sense of "without ornament", "simple", or various similar connotations.In his famous "Glossary of Botanic...
or robust. The robust variety of
Australopithecus has since been renamed
ParanthropusThe robust australopithecines, members of the extinct hominin genus Paranthropus , were bipedal hominids that probably descended from the gracile australopithecine hominids...
(
P. robustusParanthropus robustus was originally discovered in Southern Africa in 1938. The development of P. robustus, namely in cranial features, seemed to be aimed in the direction of a "heavy-chewing complex"...
from South Africa, and
P. boisei and
P. aethiopicus from East Africa). In the 1930s, when the robust specimens were first described by
Robert BroomProfessor Robert Broom was a Scottish South African doctor and paleontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow...
, the
Paranthropus genus was used. During the 1960s, the robust variety was moved into
Australopithecus. The recent consensus has been to return to the original classification as a separate genus.
Ian TattersallIan Tattersall is a paleoanthropologist and a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. Tattersall received his PhD from Yale University in 1971. In addition to human evolution, he has worked extensively with lemurs. He is working with The Templeton Foundation.-Selected publications:* The...
once noted (
NatureNature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
2006, 441:155) that paleoanthropology is distinguished as the "branch of science [that] keeps its primary data secret."
Renowned paleoanthropologists
- Robert Ardrey
Robert Ardrey was an American playwright and screenwriter who returned to his academic training in anthropology and the behavioral sciences in the 1950s....
(1908–1980)
- Lee Berger (1965 - )
- Davidson Black
Davidson Black, FRS was a Canadian paleoanthropologist, best known for his naming of Sinanthropus pekinensis . He was Chairman of the Geological Survey of China and a Fellow of the Royal Society...
(1884–1934)
- Robert Broom
Professor Robert Broom was a Scottish South African doctor and paleontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow...
(1866–1951)
- Michel Brunet (paleontologist)
Michel Brunet is a French paleontologist and a professor at the Collège de France. In 2001 Brunet announced the discovery in Central Africa of the skull and jaw remains of a late Miocene hominid nicknamed Toumaï...
(1940 - )
- J. Desmond Clark
John Desmond Clark was a British archaeologist noted particularly for his work on prehistoric Africa.Educated at Monkton Combe School near Bath, J. Desmond Clark graduated with a B.A...
(1916–2002)
- Carleton S. Coon
Carleton Stevens Coon, was an American physical anthropologist, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer and professor at Harvard, and president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.-Biography:Carleton Coon was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts to a...
(1904–1981)
- Raymond Dart
Raymond Arthur Dart was an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, best known for his involvement in the 1924 discovery of the first fossil ever found of Australopithecus africanus, an extinct hominid closely related to humans, at Taung in the North of South Africa in the province...
(1893–1988)
- Eugene Dubois
Marie Eugène François Thomas Dubois was a Dutch paleoanthropologist. He earned worldwide fame for his discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus , or 'Java Man'...
(1858–1940)
- Johann Carl Fuhlrott
Prof. Dr. Johann Carl Fuhlrott was born December 31, 1803 in Leinefelde, Germany, and died October 17, 1877 in Elberfeld, . He is famous for recognizing the significance of the bones of Neanderthal 1, a Neanderthal specimen discovered by German laborers who were digging for limestone in Neander...
(1803–1877)
- Glynn Isaac
Glynn Llywelyn Isaac was a South African archaeologist who specialised in the very early prehistory of Africa...
(1937–1985)
- Donald C. Johanson (1943- )
- Kamoya Kimeu
Kamoya Kimeu, is one of the world's most successful fossil collectors who, together with paleontologists Meave Leakey and Richard Leakey, is responsible for some of the most significant paleoanthropological discoveries...
(1940- )
- Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald
Professor Dr. Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald was a distinguished paleontologist and geologist who conducted research on hominins, including Homo erectus. Ralph von Koenigswald made many contributions to paleontology during his career...
(1902–1982)
- Jeffrey Laitman
Jeffrey Todd Laitman, Ph.D. is an American anatomist and physical anthropologist whose science has combined experimental, comparative, and paleontological studies to understand the development and evolution of the human upper respiratory and vocal tract regions...
(1951- )
- Louis Leakey
Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey was a British archaeologist and naturalist whose work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in Africa. He also played a major role in creating organizations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there...
(1903–1972)
- Meave Leakey
Meave G. Leakey is together with her husband Richard Leakey one of the most renowned contemporary paleontologists. She studies the origin of mankind in Africa.-Flat-Faced Man of Kenya:...
(1942- )
- Mary Leakey
Mary Leakey was a British archaeologist and anthropologist, who discovered the first skull of a fossil ape on Rusinga Island and also a noted robust Australopithecine called Zinjanthropus at Olduvai. For much of her career she worked together with her husband, Louis Leakey, in Olduvai Gorge,...
(1913–1996)
- Richard Leakey
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey is a politician, paleoanthropologist and conservationist. He is second of the three sons of the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey, and is the younger brother of Colin Leakey...
(1944- )
- André Leroi-Gourhan
André Leroi-Gourhan was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection.- Biography :...
(1911–1986)
- Kenneth Oakley
Kenneth Page Oakley was an English physical anthropologist, palaeontologist and geologist.Oakley, known for his work in the relative dating of fossils by fluorine content, was instrumental in the exposure in the 1950s of the Piltdown Man hoax.Oakley was born and died in Amersham,...
(1911–1981)
- David Pilbeam
David Pilbeam is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University and curator of paleoanthropology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D...
- John T. Robinson
John Talbot Robinson was a distinguished South African hominid paleontologist. His most famous discovery was the nearly complete Human evolution fossil skull of an Australopithecus africanus, known as Mrs. Ples.Robinson was born in Elliot, South Africa...
(1923–2001)
- Jeffrey H. Schwartz
Jeffrey Hugh Schwartz, PhD, is an American physical anthropologist and professor of biological anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, President of the World Academy of Art and Science ....
(1948-)
- Chris Stringer
Christopher Brian Stringer FRS, better known as Chris Stringer, is a British anthropologist.He is one of the leading proponents of the recent single-origin hypothesis or "Out of Africa" theory, which hypothesizes that modern humans originated in Africa over 100,000 years ago and replaced the...
(1947- )
- Ian Tattersall
Ian Tattersall is a paleoanthropologist and a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. Tattersall received his PhD from Yale University in 1971. In addition to human evolution, he has worked extensively with lemurs. He is working with The Templeton Foundation.-Selected publications:* The...
(1945- )
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of both Piltdown Man and Peking Man. Teilhard conceived the idea of the Omega Point and developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of Noosphere...
(1881–1955)
- Phillip V. Tobias
Phillip Vallentine Tobias is a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg...
(1925- )
- Erik Trinkaus
Erik Trinkaus, PhD, is a prominent paleoanthropologist and expert on Neanderthal biology and human evolution. Trinkaus researches the evolution of the species Homo sapiens and recent human diversity, focusing on the paleoanthropology and emergence of late archaic and early modern humans, and the...
(1948-)
- Alan Walker (1938-)
- Franz Weidenreich
-External references:*...
(1873–1948)
- Milford H. Wolpoff
Milford H. Wolpoff is a paleoanthropologist, and since 1977, a professor of anthropology and adjunct associate research scientist, Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan...
(1942- )
- Tim D. White (1950- )
See also
- Human evolution
Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
- List of human evolution fossils
- Timeline of human evolution
The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the development of human species, and the evolution of humans' ancestors. It includes a brief explanation of some animals, species or genera, which are possible ancestors of Homo sapiens...
External links