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( Australopithecus)
†A. afarensis ("Lucy")
†A. africanus
†A. anamensis
†A. bahrelghazali
†A. garhi
Formerly Australopithecus,
now Paranthropus
†P. aethiopicus
†P. robustus
†P. boisei The genus Australopithecus (Latin australis "of the south", Greek pithekos "ape") is a group of extinct hominids, the gracile australopithecines, closely related to humans. Gracile australopithecines shared several traits with modern apes and humans, and were widespread throughout Eastern and Northern Africa by a time between 3.0 and 3.9 million years ago. The earliest evidence of fundamentally bipedal hominids can be observed at the site of Laetoli in Tanzania. These hominid footprints are remarkably similar to modern humans and have been dated as 3.7 million years old. Until recently, the footprints have generally been classified as australopithecine because that had been the only form of pre-human known to have existed in that region at that time; however, some scholars have considered reassigning them to a yet unidentified very early species of the genus Homo. According to the Chimpanzee Genome Project, both human (Ardipithecus, Australopithecus and Homo) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus) lineages diverged from a common ancestor about 5 to 6 million years ago, if we assume a constant rate of evolution. It is theoretically more likely for evolution to happen slower (older), as opposed to quicker, from the date suggested by a gene clock (the result of which is given as an "youngest common ancestor", i.e. the latest possible date of diversion.) However, more recently discovered hominids are somewhat older than the molecular clock would theorize. Sahelanthropus tchadensis, commonly called "Toumai" is about 7 million years old and Orrorin tugenensis lived at least 6 million years ago. Since little is known of them, they remain controversial among scientists since the molecular clock in humans has determined that humans and chimpanzees had an evolutionary split at least a million years later. One theory suggests that humans and chimpanzees diverged once, then interbred around one million years after diverging. [1]
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