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Kenyanthropus
''Kenyanthropus'' is a hominin genus identified from the Lomekwi site by Lake Turkana, Kenya, dated to 3.3 to 3.2 million years ago during the Middle Pliocene. It contains one species, ''K. platyops'', but may also include the 2 million year old ''Homo rudolfensis'', or ''K. rudolfensis''. Before its naming in 2001, ''Australopithecus afarensis'' was widely regarded as the only australopithecine to exist during the Middle Pliocene, but ''Kenyanthropus'' evinces a greater diversity than once acknowledged. ''Kenyanthropus'' is most recognisable by an unusually flat face and small teeth for such an early hominin, with values on the extremes or beyond the range of variation for australopithecines in regard to these features. Multiple australopithecine species may have coexisted by foraging for different food items (niche partitioning), which may be reason why these apes anatomically differ in features related to chewing. The Lomekwi site also yielded the earliest stone tool industry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Afarensis
''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not take place until the 1970s. From 1972 to 1977, the International Afar Research Expedition—led by anthropologists Maurice Taieb, Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens—unearthed several hundreds of hominin specimens in Hadar, Ethiopia, the most significant being the exceedingly well-preserved skeleton AL 288-1 ("Lucy") and the site AL 333 ("the First Family"). Beginning in 1974, Mary Leakey led an expedition into Laetoli, Tanzania, and notably recovered fossil trackways. In 1978, the species was first described, but this was followed by arguments for splitting the wealth of specimens into different species given the wide range of variation which had been attributed to sexual dimorphism (normal differences between males and females). ''A. afa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo
''Homo'' () is the genus that emerged in the (otherwise extinct) genus ''Australopithecus'' that encompasses the extant species ''Homo sapiens'' ( modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely related to modern humans (depending on the species), most notably ''Homo erectus'' and ''Homo neanderthalensis''. The genus emerged with the appearance of '' Homo habilis'' just over 2 million years ago. ''Homo'', together with the genus '' Paranthropus'', is probably sister to ''Australopithecus africanus'', which itself had previously split from the lineage of '' Pan'', the chimpanzees. ''Homo erectus'' appeared about 2 million years ago and, in several early migrations, spread throughout Africa (where it is dubbed ''Homo ergaster'') and Eurasia. It was likely that the first human species lived in a hunter-gatherer society and was able to control fire. An adaptive and successful species, ''Homo erectus'' persisted for more than a million ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus
''Australopithecus'' (, ; ) is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. The genus ''Homo'' (which includes modern humans) emerged within ''Australopithecus'', as sister to e.g. ''Australopithecus sediba''. Also the genera ''Paranthropus'' and ''Kenyanthropus'' emerged within ''Australopithecus''. ''Australopithecus'' is a member of the subtribe Australopithecina, which sometimes also includes ''Ardipithecus'', though the term "australopithecine" is sometimes used to refer only to members of ''Australopithecus''. Species include ''Australopithecus garhi, A. garhi'', ''Australopithecus africanus, A. africanus'', ''Australopithecus sediba, A. sediba'', ''Australopithecus afarensis, A. afarensis, Australopithecus anamensis, A. anamensis, Australopithecus bahrelghazali, A. bahrelghazali'' and ''Australopithecus deyiremeda, A. deyiremeda''. Debate exists as to whether some ''Australopithecus'' species should be reclassified into ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecine
Australopithecina or Hominina is a subtribe in the tribe Hominini. The members of the subtribe are generally ''Australopithecus'' (cladistically including the genus, genera ''Homo'', ''Paranthropus'', and ''Kenyanthropus''), and it typically includes the earlier ''Ardipithecus'', ''Orrorin'', ''Sahelanthropus'', and ''Graecopithecus''. All these closely related species are now sometimes collectively termed australopiths or homininians. They are the extinct, close relatives of humans and, with the extant genus ''Homo'', comprise the human clade. Members of the human clade, i.e. the Hominini after the split from the chimpanzees, are now called Hominina (''see Hominidae; Hominidae#Terminology, terms "hominids" and hominins''). While none of the groups normally directly assigned to this group survived, the australopiths do not appear to be literally extinct (in the sense of having no living descendants) as the genera ''Kenyanthropus'', ''Paranthropus'' and ''Homo'' probably emerged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo Rudolfensis
''Homo rudolfensis'' is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East Africa about 2 million years ago (mya). Because ''H. rudolfensis'' coexisted with several other hominins, it is debated what specimens can be confidently assigned to this species beyond the lectotype skull KNM-ER 1470 and other partial skull aspects. No bodily remains are definitively assigned to ''H. rudolfensis''. Consequently, both its generic classification and validity are debated without any wide consensus, with some recommending the species to actually belong to the genus ''Australopithecus'' as ''A. rudolfensis'' or ''Kenyanthropus'' as ''K. rudolfensis'', or that it is synonymous with the contemporaneous and anatomically similar ''H. habilis''. ''H. rudolfensis'' is distinguished from ''H. habilis'' by larger size, but it is also argued that this species actually consists of male ''H. habilis'' specimens, assuming that ''H. habilis'' was sexually dimorphic and males were muc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lomekwi
Lomekwi 3 is the name of an archaeological site in Kenya where ancient stone tools have been discovered dating to 3.3 million years ago, which make them the oldest ever found. Discovery In July 2011, a team of archeologists led by Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis of Stony Brook University, United States, were heading to a site near Kenya's Lake Turkana near where ''Kenyanthropus platyops'' fossils had previously been found. The group made a wrong turn on the way and ended up at a previously unexplored region and decided to do some surveying. They quickly found some stone artifacts on the site, which they named Lomekwi 3. A year later they returned to the site for a full excavation. Harmand presented her findings at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society on April 14, 2015 and published the full announcement and results on the cover of Nature on May 21, 2015. Artifacts Around 20 well preserved artifacts have been dug up at Lomekwi 3 including anvils, cores, and fla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meave Leakey
Meave G. Leakey (born Meave Epps; 28 July 1942) is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has done extensive field research in the Turkana Basin. She has Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science degrees. Flat-faced man of Kenya Leakey's research team at Lake Turkana, Kenya made a discovery in 1999. They found a 3.5-million-year-old skull and partial jaw thought to belong to a new branch of the early human family. She named the find ''Kenyanthropus platyops'' ("flat-faced man of Kenya"). Personal life Leakey was married to Richard Leakey, a palaeontologist. They have two children, Louise (born 1972) and Samira (born 1974). Louise Leakey continues family traditions by conducting palaeontological research. Leakey initially studied zoology and marine zoology at the University of North Wales. Her first contact with the Leakey fami ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stone Tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Age) cultures that have become extinct. Archaeologists often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of different tools throughout history, including arrowheads, spearheads, hand axes, and querns. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a flintknapper. Knapped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as chert or flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt, and quartzite via a process known as lithic reduction. One simple form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hominin
The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The term was originally introduced by Camille Arambourg (1948). Arambourg combined the categories of ''Hominina'' and ''Simiina'' due to Gray (1825) into his new subtribe. Traditionally, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans were grouped together as pongids. Since Gray's classification, evidence has accumulated from genetic phylogeny confirming that humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas are more closely related to each other than to the orangutan. The former pongids were reassigned to the subfamily Hominidae ("great apes"), which already included humans, but the details of this reassignment remain contested; within Hominini, not every source excludes gorillas, and not every source includes chimpanzees. Humans are the only extant species in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Turkana
Lake Turkana (), formerly known as Lake Rudolf, is a lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, in northern Kenya, with its far northern end crossing into Ethiopia. It is the world's largest permanent desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake. By volume it is the world's fourth-largest salt lake after the Caspian Sea, Issyk-Kul, and Lake Van (passing the shrinking South Aral Sea), and among all lakes it ranks 24th. Lake Turkana is now threatened by the construction of Gilgel Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia due to the damming of the Omo river which supplies most of the lake's water. Although the lake commonly has been —and to some degree still is— used for drinking water, its salinity (slightly brackish) and very high levels of fluoride (much higher than in fluoridated water) generally make it unsuitable, and it has also been a source of diseases spread by contaminated water. Increasingly, communities on the lake's shores rely on underground springs for drinking water. The same c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louise Leakey
Princess Louise de Merode (''née'' Leakey, born 21 March 1972) is a Kenyan paleontologist and anthropologist. She conducts research and field work on human fossils in Eastern Africa. Early life and education Louise Leakey was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician Richard Leakey and British paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey in 1972, the same year that her paleoanthropologist grandfather, Louis Leakey, died. She first became actively involved in fossil discoveries in 1977, when at the age of five she became the youngest documented person to find a hominoid fossil. Leakey earned her International Baccalaureate from United World College of the Atlantic and a Bachelor of Science degree in geology and biology from the University of Bristol. She earned a PhD from the University College, London in 2001. Career In 1993, Leakey joined her mother as a co-leader of paleontological expeditions in northern Kenya. The Koobi Fora research projec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr (; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned Taxonomy (biology), taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, Philosophy of biology, philosopher of biology, and History of science, historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the Modern synthesis (20th century), modern evolutionary synthesis of Gregor Mendel, Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Charles Darwin, Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the Species, biological species concept. Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the ''species problem''. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for species. In his book ''Systematics and the Origin of Species'' (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of Morphology (biology), morph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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