Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Homo (from Latin homō '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.
Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelli) Hominoidea is a superfamily of primates. Members of this superfamily are called hominoids or apes, and include gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons, bonobos, and humans. Hominoidea is one of the six major groups in the order Primates. The majority are found in forests in Southeastern Asia and Equatorial Africa, with the exception of humans, which have ...
The genus Homo has been taken to originate some two million years ago, since the discovery of stone tools in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in the 1960s. Homo habilis (Leakey et al., 1964) would be the first "human" species (member of genus Homo) by definition, its type specimen being the OH 7 fossils.
The trajectory of diets between Homo habilis and Homo erectus can be described as a diversification of diet as Homo erectus spread within Africa and beyond into Asia. Meat played a critical role in the evolution of H. habilis, but as Homo erectus evolved the diet broadened to include tougher foods that H. habilis did not consume regularly.
Homo erectus derives from early Homo or late Australopithecus. Homo habilis, although significantly different of anatomy and physiology, is thought to be the ancestor of Homo ergaster, or African Homo erectus; but it is also known to have coexisted with H. erectus for almost half a million years
Based on dental microwear-texture analysis, H. habilis (like other early Homo) likely did not regularly consume tough foods. Microwear-texture complexity is, on average, somewhere between that of tough-food eaters and leaf eaters ( folivores ), [ 53 ] and points to an increasingly generalised and omnivorous diet. [ 54 ]
The name Homo of the biological genus to which humans belong is Latin for 'human'. [e] It was chosen originally by Carl Linnaeus in his classification system. [f] The English word human is from the Latin humanus, the adjectival form of homo. The Latin homo derives from the Indo-European root * dhghem, or 'earth'. [222]
Homo erectus (/ ˌ h oʊ m oʊ ə ˈ r ɛ k t ə s / lit. ' upright man ') is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, spanning nearly 2 million years.It is the first human species to evolve a humanlike body plan and gait, to leave Africa and colonize Asia and Europe, and to wield fire.