By Rebecca Stefoff
This sequence takes readers on a trip in the course of the evolutionary background of people.
Read or Download First Humans (Humans: An Evolutionary History) PDF
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Additional resources for First Humans (Humans: An Evolutionary History)
Sample text
Most 39 FIRST HUMANS paleoanthropologists now think that the genus Homo, the first true humans, evolved from one of those australopith species. ) Dart was not the only South African medical man with an interest in early human ancestors. One of Dart’s colleagues, a surgeon named Robert Broom, found several australopith fossils in the 1930s and 1940s. Broom made one discovery, though, that did not look like an australopith. In 1938, at a place called Kromdraii in South Africa’s Transvaal Province, Broom found the remains of a thick-boned skull that combined some humanlike features with other features that had not been seen before.
Such crests, which can serve as anchoring points for powerful muscles used in chewing, are seen today in large apes such as gorillas but not in humans. Broom decided that his find belonged in a separate genus of its own. He created the genus name Paranthropus for it, and he gave it the species name robustus because it looked robust, or sturdy. Ten years later, Broom found more Paranthropus fossils in a South African cave called Swartkrans. He gave these new finds the species name crassidens (“thick-toothed”), although experts later grouped them into the robustus species with the Kromdraii specimen.
One theory is that P. aethiopicus, the earliest known species of robust hominin, evolved new features that moved it away from the main line of australopith evolution. Later the other two species of robust hominins evolved from P. aethiopicus. Another theory is that several strains of robust hominins evolved from australopith ancestors independently in different parts of Africa. They developed similar features—such as large molars and jaws—because they adapted to similar conditions. A third possibility is that more than three species of robust hominins existed, but scientists have not yet found fossils of the other species.