Anthro 102 1st Edition Lecture 8Previous LectureI. What is identity?II. Personality and Child RearingIII. Class and PersonalityIV. LifecycleV. The Life Cycle: BirthVI. ConclusionI. Hope of Lifea. In face a skull found in the African nation of Chad in 2002 and named Sahelanthropus tchadensisi. Nicknamed tourmalii. Means “hope of love” in the local Goran language has pushed back the origins ofhumans to nearly 7 million years agob. Another discovery reported in 2006 provides strong evidence for an ancestor-descendant relationship b/w two early hominid lines one of which leads to our own human heritageII. Understanding in Fluxa. So where does this leave us, evolutionarily speaking?i. At a very exciting times as we seek to unravel the history of the speciesb. Our understanding of our genealogy is presently in flux, and each new fossil hominid find sheds more light on our ancestryIII. Human Evolutiona. Human evolution is just like that of other speciesb. We have followed an uncertain evolutionary pathc. As new species evolved, they filled ecologic niches and either gave rise to descendants better adapted to the changing environment or become extinctd. Our own evolutionary history has many dead-end side branchese. New Hypotheses about Our Ancestryi. Important to look at the origin and evolution of the hominids, the group that includes our ancestorsii. New discoveries of fossil hominids, as well as new techniques for scientific analysis, are leading to a new hypotheses about are ancestryIV. Continuing Discoveries Changing our Ideasa. As recently as 2000, the earliest fossil evidence of hominids was 4.4 million year old rocks in eastern Asiab. In 2004, discoveries had pushed back that age back to almost 7 million yearsc. Now, new findings in Ethiopia indicate a direct link b/w two early hominid groups that were previously thought to be closely relatedV. What are primates?These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best Used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.a. Primates are different to characterize as an order because they lack the strong specializations found in most other mammalism ordersb. We can, however, point to several trends in their evolution that help define primates andare related to their arboreal (tree-dwelling) ancestryc. Trends in Primatesi. These includes changes in the skeleton and:1. Mode of locomotion 2. An increase in brain size3. A shift toward smaller, fewer, less specialized teeth4. The evolution of stereoscopic vision5. And a grasping hand with opposable thumbii. Not all of these trends took place in every primate group, nor did they evolve at the same rate in each group iii. In fact some primates have retained certain primitive features, whereas others show all or most of these trendsd. Present-day Old World Monkeysi. Are distributed in the tropical regions of Africa and Asiaii. Though to have evolved from a primitive anthropoid ancestor such as Aegyptopithecus sometime during the Oligocenee. New World Monkeysi. Super Family ceboideaii. Are only found in central and south Americaiii. They probably evolved from African Monkeys1. Migrated across the widening Atlantic sometime during the Oligocene2. Have continued evolving in isolation to this present dayf. No Contacti. No evidence exists of any promsimian or other primitive primates in Central or South America nor of any contact with Old World Monkeys after the initial immigration from Africaii. New World Monkeys are characterized by1. a prehensile tail, flattish face2. widely separated nostrils3. howler, spider and squirrel monkeysVI. Hominoids- superfamily hominoidea a. Consists of Three Familiesi. The Great Apes1. family Pongidae2. Includes Chimpanzee, Gorillas, and Orangutansii. The Lesser Apes1. Family Hylobatidae2. Which are gibbons and siamangs iii. And the Hominoids 1. Family Hominoidea2. Which are humans and their extinct ancestors b. Hominoid Lineagei. Diverged from the Old World monkeysii. Sometime before the Miocene, but exactly when is still being debatediii. It is generally accepted, however, that hominoids evolved in Africa probably from the ancestral group that include Aegyptopithecusc. Climate Shifts i. Recall that beginning in the late Eocene 1. The Northwood movements of the continents resulted in pronounced climate shifts ii. In Africa, Europe, Asia, and else where1. A major cooling trend began and the tropical and subtropical rain forestsslowly began to change a variety of mixed forests 2. Separated by Savanna’s and Grasslands as temperatures and rainfall decreased VII. Anthropoids a. Much of our knowledge about the early evolutionary of Anthropoids comes from Fossils found in the Fayum district, a small desert area in Southwest of Cairo, Egypt b. During the late Eocene and Oligocene, this region of Africa was a lush, tropical rain forestthat supported a diverse and abundant fauna and florac. Within this forest lived many different arboreal anthropoids as well as various prosimians d. Thousands of Fossil Specimensi. In fact, several thousand fossil specimens representing more than 20 species of primates have been recovered from rocks of this region ii. One of the earliest anthropoids and a possible ancestors of the old world monkeys was Aegyptopithecus1. A small eating fruit-eating arboreal primate about 5kg2. It had monkey characteristics and ape features 3. The closest link we currently have to Old world primatese. Anthropoid Superfamilies’ i. Anthropoids are divided in three super families1. Old World Monkeys2. New World Monkeys3.