Lb1 Research Paper

The infamous event of the Piltdown hoax is one that continues to draw speculative attention over a century after the initial announcement of the paleoanthropological findings. Although many scientists, especially those involved in the field of paleoanthropology, would like to forget the incident entirely, the Piltdown man—taxonomically referred to as Eoanthropus dawsoni—is perhaps the greatest hoax in anthropological history. By 1912, British archaeologists and paleontologists were desperate for a significant paleoanthropological finding that would provide the missing link between humans and apes in hominin evolution (Prosser, 2009). The Piltdown man was originally a famous finding that straddled the human-animal boundary, dichotomously

The earliest hominine fossils show evidence of marked differences in body size, which may reflect a pattern of the different sexes in our early ancestors. The bones suggest that females may have been 3 to 4 ft in height and

The first paper is due by Monday, April 9, 11:59 p.m. You MAY use sources outside of the Liberty Search Engine (and are encouraged to do so). Also you may use scholarly books and not just journal articles. You should avoid using generic websites that do not appear scholarly in nature. A good rule of thumb is that if a website does not have an author, it is not a good source. Good online material has also usually been published in print at some point. Google Scholar and JSTOR are great places to search, as well as the online encyclopedias I've shown you. Always feel free to send me an email if you have questions about sources or formatting.

In the Article “Redrawing Humanity’s Family Tree” by John Noble Wilford, describes how two different skulls challenge the theories of human origins and migrations. The Central African skull, that dates back to nearly 7 million years ago, was assigned to a whole new genus and species because of its apelike and evolved hominid species. The 1.75-million-year-old Georgian skull shows evidence that the first hominids may have been intercontinental travelers who set motion the migrations that occupied the whole planet. Finally a third skull was found that is the same age and shares a resemblance but, the size of the skull suggests that the brain was smaller than expected for H. erectus.

Homo floresiensis (“Man of Flores”) is the name for a possible new species in the genus Homo, remarkable for its small body, small brain, and survival until relatively recent times (www.en.wikipedia.org). Anthropologists Peter Brown of University of New England in South Wales, Australia, Michael Morwood and their colleagues have argued that a variety of features, both primitive and derived, identified LB1 (the first skeleton found in cave of Liang Bua) is that of a new species of hominin, Homo floresiensis. The first specimens were discovered by Thomas Sutikna and colleagues from the Indonesian Research Centre for Archaeology in Liang Bua cave of Flores, Indonesia in September of 2003

Therefore, early modern humans and Neanderthals could have been around and breeding at the same time, it is just a small chance.

Darwin once hypothesized that humans evolved from an ape like ancestor and that those ancestors most likely originated in Africa since the majority of the great apes lived there. Unfortunately, Darwin’s hypothesis was ignored for reasons such as people (e.g. Europeans) not liking of having African ancestors—not to mention the lack of evidence did not help in supporting such hypothesis. Thus, finding the missing link between apes and humans was of great important—it still is. Thankfully, through extensive research many scientists have been able to determine a clade called Hominin [7]. This clade contains humans as well as their most closely related relatives.

“How old is the oldest human fossil?,” If you had said about 700,000 years, you would probably have been right until just recently that is, “The September 1998 issue of Discover magazine”, reports that Ernesto Abbate, a geology professor from Florence, Italy, has just discovered the fossilized skull and teeth of a humanlike creature who might have lived, as far back as, one million years ago. Calling this creature Buia Man after the city in northeastern Africa where the remains were found. Prof. Abbate thinks he has discovered the earliest fossil that displays physical features associated with Homo sapiens, the species to which modern humans belong. Moreover, Buia Man says, Prof. Abbate also shows physical

A new species of hominids was found on Flores, the fossils show the race to have a tiny frame and small brain. These hobbits seem to have existed tens of thousands of years ago and are even thought have coincided in the same time with the early humans. Unfortunately,  the discovery

advantages to open new opportunities for the early primates that allowed to crack up bones and nuts for food. Likewise, these tools were both found with Australopithecus boisei that shared the same terrain during the same time period with the Homo habilis. “If australopithecines were equally skillful, then [the explanation that there is an association with intelligence and tool making would] fail” (Lewin and Foley 293). These tools both found with the Australopithecines and homo species pushed new theories into action about how humans succeeded into what they are currently. Also, one very unusual specimen was found in the island of Flores. A new species that taught that scientific community to reevaluate the human evolution and how they became

The first Neanderthal fossils found in Europe, a fragmented child’s cranium in Belgium in 1830, and an adult cranium in Gibraltar, were not immediately recognized as a divergent kind of human. Only in 1856 after a partial skeleton was found in a cave in the Neander Valley in Germany it became clear that these fossils belonged to an extinct human and our closest evolutionary relative (Hublin and Pääbo, 2006). Since then, questions about their relationship with modern humans have been fiercely debated between anthropologists. But what attracts most interest from scientists and popular media is the possibility of hybridization between Neanderthals and modern humans if, in other words, they were a genetically different specie or a

       In the article, "Natural History of Homo erectus" by Susan C. Antón discussed our view of H. erectus is different today than when Pithecanthropus erectus, then only the second fossil hominin taxon to be discovered, was described by Dubois (1894) (Antón, C. Susan, 162). H. erectus was the most primitive and smallest-brained of the fossil hominins (Antón, C. Susan, 162). Therefore, early observations expended significant effort showing that the Indonesian fossils from Trinil were actually hominins (Antón, C. Susan, 162). Thus, it took the dismissal of Piltdown and the broad acceptance of Australopithecus as a hominin ancestor, along with the substantial Asian

There has been a great deal of heated debate for the last few decades about where modern Homo sapiens originated. From the battle grounds, two main theories emerged. One theory, labeled “Out-of-Africa” or “population replacement” explains that all modern Homo sapiens evolved from a common Homo erectus ancestor in Africa 100,000 years ago. The species began to spread and replace all other archaic human-like populations around 35,000 to 89,000 years ago. The rivaling opinion, entitled the “regional continuity” theory or “multiregional evolution” model refutes this theory and states modern humans evolved from various species of Homo erectus who interbred with others that lived in

Hominids with a brain absolutely and relatively larger than that of the australopithecines appeared about 2.3 million years ago. These hominids are classified in our own genus: Homo. The earliest species to appear was the Homo Habilis. It was the first of our ancestors to show a significant increase in brain size and also the first to be found associated with stone tools. These characteristics resulted in this species’ placement into the human genus, Homo.

The hominid also referred to as the upright man was discovered in various parts of the globe including Lake Turkana in Kenya, Spain, and Java in Indonesia among other places. They are estimated to have lived over 1.6 million years ago (Coolidge & Wynn, 2011).