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The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the evolutionary lineage of the modern human species, Homo sapiens, throughout the history of life, beginning some 4 billion years ago down to recent evolution within H. sapiens during and since the Last Glacial Period.
The first known mass extinction was the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago, which killed most of the planet's obligate anaerobes. Researchers have identified five other major extinction events in Earth's history, with estimated losses below: [11] End Ordovician: 440 million years ago, 86% of all species lost, including graptolites
The hominoids are descendants of a common ancestor.. Homo sapiens is a distinct species of the hominid family of primates, which also includes all the great apes. [1] Over their evolutionary history, humans gradually developed traits such as bipedalism, dexterity, and complex language, [2] as well as interbreeding with other hominins (a tribe of the African hominid subfamily), [3] indicating ...
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
A 1.4-million-year-old fossil jaw discovered in a South African cave in 1949 has now been identified as that of a previously unknown human relative species dubbed the “nutcracker man ...
The LUCA probably existed at latest 3.6 billion years ago, and possibly as early as 4.3 billion years ago [2] or earlier. The nature of this point or stage of divergence remains a topic of research. All earlier forms of life preceding this divergence and all extant organisms are generally thought to share common ancestry. On the basis of a ...
Homo (from Latin homÅ ' human ') is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called archaic humans) classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis.
Researchers have announced the naming of a new species of human ancestor, Homo bodoensis. This species lived in Africa, about half a million years ago – during the Middle Pleistocene – and was ...