Toumai, The Oldest Relative of the Human Race Essay

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

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.

There were 24 Neanderthal remains and 40 early modern human remains that were studied. The bimolecular preservation of DNA of five early humans and four Neanderthals was helpful enough for the preservation.

This article shows how Paleoanthropologist David Lordkipanidze and his group of archeologist discovered a 1.8 million-year-old skull fossil that could lead to knowing more about the earliest known ancestors of humans that ventured outside of Africa. Lordkipanidze’s excavation in the Georgia site known as Dmanisi. With this archeology find, it has been concluded that all early fossil humans belong to the same species known as Homo erectus. The article explains that the Dmanisi hominins had brains less than half the size of a modern human’s, and are key to understand the evolution and expansion these ancestors experienced from Africa to Eurasia. Genetic studies indicate that their expansion began from Africa about 1.9 million years ago. The article also mentions that with these new findings there can be a better ground from where to start to understand these ancestors as how they lived and socialized. Lordkipanidze does mention that the Dmanisi “were very primitive, we think there were social groups that connected with each other and learned from each other”.

It was a “ missing link’’ which definitely prove that man had evolved from the same ancestors as modern apes. The bone of the skull has resembled the human and the light jawbone resembled

Three recent fossil findings believed to be hominin ancestors have been selected for description and any controversy surrounding their discovery will be discussed. The three fossils are: Homo floresiensis, Homo rudolfensis and Kenyanthropus

“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

As recently as only five years ago, anthropology researchers found that humans and Neanderthals had interbred at some point in time simply based on the shapes of skulls found in caves buried beneath thousands of years of soil. This mirrors a 2010 study that has uncovered the first proven

Another major phenotype to be discussed is the drastically divergent brain size when compared to other Homo species. The LB1 remains contain a cranium with a volume of 380cm3 (Brown, et al.). When this brain size is compared to a modern Homo sapiens volume of approximately 1300cm3 (Cosgrove, et al), the difference is almost laughable. Instead, the LB1 cranial capacity is more analogous with that of genus Australopithecus, at 450cm3 (Roth and Dicke), which would seem to indicate that the brain size of the specimen is primitively determined.

The third piece of evidence that made it undoubtedly that Australopithecus afarensis walked upright was the footprints found at Laetoli in northern Tanzania. In 1976, Mary Leakey discovered hominid footprints that was preserved in volcanic ash and unearthed 1978. “The Laetoli Footprints” and skeletal structure excavated showed clear evidence of bipedalism. Many believe the three individuals who made these footprints belonged to the species Australopithecus afarensis. The footprints demonstrated that Australopithecus afarensis walked upright

Professor David Lordkipanidze presented some highly interesting information regarding our ancestry as humans. He is an internationally renowned scientist and paleontologist, and it was a great privilege to hear about his work in the Dmanisi where he led the discovery and analysis of the earliest human found outside of Africa.

Donald K. Grayson, an Archaeologist was one person of the bunch that doubted the discovery, based on the article the reason why he thought so is because “there might be other reasons for why there is marking on the bones”. After that the article goes on to talk about how the mastodon bones where discovered. In the text it stated that “stones were seen around the broken mastodon bones and that researcher tried to replicate the marking on the bones using the stones”. It turns out that the process result in a similar scattered pattern seen when they first dug up the Mastodon bones. Based on this information Rolfe D. Mandel a geoarchaeologist stated “this only proves that people had some role in how these markings on the bones came

“Analyses of the hominid indicate that they belonged to a previously unidentified species, which anthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and his colleagues are calling

The earliest H. erectus is found in Arica, and one of most spectacular fossil comes from Nariokotome. According to these fossils, the anthologists found that H. erectus share some features with modern human beings. Firstly, the ratio of arm length and leg length of H. erectus is much more like human being. This feature means that H. erectus has adapted the life on the ground. Secondly, H. erectus has a larger brain size. Thirdly, a sets of footprints that are found in Ileret show us the footprints that can be dated to 1.5 may and we notice that H. erectus can walk like modern humans because they have same feet with us. In the process of cleaning the face bone of the Bodo skull, Tim White notice that there are many marks that left on the cheek, and he think these marks were made by stone tool and maybe it is a form of ritual, which may be a evidence that human try to

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