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The evidence on which scientific accounts of human evolution are based comes from many fields of natural science. The main source of knowledge about the evolutionary process has traditionally been the fossil record, but since the development of genetics beginning in the 1970s, DNA analysis has come to occupy a place of comparable importance.
The human foot evolved as a platform to support the entire weight of the body, rather than acting as a grasping structure (like hands), as it did in early hominids. Humans therefore have smaller toes than their bipedal ancestors. This includes a non-opposable hallux, which is relocated in line with the other toes. [7]
The human body is not built from a professionally engineered blue print but a system shaped over long periods of time by evolution with all kinds of trade-offs and imperfections. Understanding the evolution of the human body can help medical doctors better understand and treat various disorders.
Explanations of the rapid evolution and exceptional size of the human brain can be classified into five groups: instrumental, social, environmental, dietary, and anatomo-physiological. The instrumental hypotheses [ 72 ] are based on the logic that evolutionary selection for larger brains is beneficial for species survival, dominance, and spread ...
Many of the human evolutionary developmental biology studies have been modeled after primate studies and consider the two together in a comparative model. Brain ontogeny and human life history evolution were looked at by Leigh, in a 2006 paper.
The history of anatomy spans from the earliest examinations of sacrificial victims to the advanced studies of the human body conducted by modern scientists. Written descriptions of human organs and parts can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Egyptian papyri , where attention to the body was necessitated by their highly elaborate ...
It was expected that dating the split of the ancestral human louse into two species, the head louse and the pubic louse, would date the loss of body hair in human ancestors. However, it turned out that the human pubic louse does not descend from the ancestral human louse, but from the gorilla louse, diverging 3.3 million years ago. This ...
Beginning of animal evolution. [54] [55] 720–630 Ma Possible global glaciation [56] [57] which increased the atmospheric oxygen and decreased carbon dioxide, and was either caused by land plant evolution [58] or resulted in it. [59] Opinion is divided on whether it increased or decreased biodiversity or the rate of evolution. [60] [61] [62 ...