Table of Contents
- 1 What did Australopithecus create?
- 2 What are Australopithecus africanus known for?
- 3 Who found Lucy?
- 4 Is Turkana boy older than Lucy?
- 5 Who found Lucy the skeleton?
- 6 What is the name of the most famous hominid?
- 7 How did the Australopithecus africanus get its name?
- 8 How can you tell what Australopithecus africanus ate?
What did Australopithecus create?
Two fossilized bones with cut marks and percussion marks were unearthed in Ethiopia. The bones are about 3.4 million years old and provide the first evidence that Australopithecus afarensis used stone tools and consumed meat. The evolutionary stories of the Swiss Army Knife and the Big Mac just got a lot longer.
What are Australopithecus africanus known for?
Australopithecus africanus was the first fossil hominin discovered in Africa. In 1924, Raymond Dart (see his biographical sketch this chapter) identified the face, mandible, and endocast as being that of a juvenile bipedal ape (see Figure 15.1).
What did Australopithecus afarensis invent?
New finds from Dikika, Ethiopia, push back the first stone tool use and meat-consumption by almost one million years and provide the first evidence that these behaviours can be attributed to Lucy’s species – Australopithecus afarensis.
Why was Australopithecus africanus unique?
africanus was a competent biped, albeit less efficient at walking than humans. A. africanus also had several upper body traits in common with arboreal non-human apes. This is variously interpreted as either evidence of a partially or fully arboreal lifestyle, or as a non-functional vestige from a more apelike ancestor.
Who found Lucy?
Donald Johanson
The team that excavated her remains, led by American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and French geologist Maurice Taieb, nicknamed the skeleton “Lucy” after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which was played at the celebration the day she was found.
Is Turkana boy older than Lucy?
The public press on Turkana Boy has been minuscule compared to that of Lucy, likely because this find was claimed to be 1.4 million years old by some experts and as old as 1.9 million Darwin years by others.
Did humans evolve from Australopithecus?
The fossil record seems to indicate that Australopithecus is ancestral to Homo and modern humans. Earlier fossils, such as Orrorin tugenensis, indicate bipedalism around six million years ago, around the time of the split between humans and chimpanzees indicated by genetic studies.
Who found the first Australopithecus?
Raymond Dart
Raymond Dart discovered the first australopithecine in November, 1924. The fossil was found at a lime quarry at Taung, southwest of Johannesburg, and was of an immature apelike individual.
Who found Lucy the skeleton?
What is the name of the most famous hominid?
Named Lucy after the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the skeleton is officially known as AL 288-1 and is arguably the most famous hominid fossil ever found.
What’s the oldest skeleton ever found?
The Lucy specimen is an early australopithecine and is dated to about 3.2 million years ago….Lucy (Australopithecus)
| Catalog no. | AL 288-1 |
|---|---|
| Age | 3.2 million years |
| Place discovered | Afar Depression, Ethiopia |
| Date discovered | November 24, 1974 |
| Discovered by | Donald Johanson Maurice Taieb Yves Coppens Tom Gray |
What is the oldest human skeleton ever found?
The oldest directly dated human remains have turned up in a Bulgarian cave. The tooth and six bone fragments are more than 40,000 years old. The new discoveries came from Bulgaria’s Bacho Kiro Cave. They support a scenario in which Homo sapiens from Africa reached the Middle East some 50,000 years ago.
How did the Australopithecus africanus get its name?
After Prof. Raymond Dart described it and named the species Australopithecus africanus (meaning southern ape of Africa), it took more than 20 years for the scientific community to widely accept Australopithecus as a member of the human family tree.
How can you tell what Australopithecus africanus ate?
Scientists can tell what Au. africanus may have eaten from looking at the remains of their teeth—tooth-size, shape, and tooth-wear can all provide diet clues. Dental microwear studies found more scratches than pits on Au. africanus teeth compared to a contemporaneous species, P. robustus.
What was the dental arcade of Australopithecus africanus?
This would extend the time range for A. africanus by almost half a million years. The dental arcade is the shape made by the rows of teeth in the upper jaw. This illustration shows the difference between the dental arcade of an ape, Australopithecus africanus and modern human, Homo sapiens.
How did Australopithecus africanus walk on two legs?
The shape of this pelvis proved Australopithecus africanus was able to walk upright on two legs. The spine has six lumbar vertebrae in the lower back. This is a human-like rather than an ape-like feature as modern humans sometimes have six but usually have five lumbar vertebrae whereas modern African apes have five or less.