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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.
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 order Primates consists of 505 extant species belonging to 81 genera. This does not include hybrid species or extinct prehistoric species. Modern molecular studies indicate that the 81 genera can be grouped into 16 families; these families are divided between two named suborders and are grouped in those suborders into named clades, and some of these families are subdivided into named ...
The Hominidae (/ h ɒ ˈ m ɪ n ɪ d iː /), whose members are known as the great apes [note 1] or hominids (/ ˈ h ɒ m ɪ n ɪ d z /), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); Gorilla (the eastern and western gorilla); Pan (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and Homo, of which only modern humans ...
All modern humans are classified into the species Homo sapiens, coined by Carl Linnaeus in his 1735 work Systema Naturae. [4] The generic name Homo is a learned 18th-century derivation from Latin homō, which refers to humans of either sex. [5] [6] The word human can refer to all members of the Homo genus. [7]
The basic ranks are species and genus. When an organism is given a species name it is assigned to a genus, and the genus name is part of the species name. The species name is also called a binomial, that is, a two-term name. For example, the zoological name for the human species is Homo sapiens. This is usually italicized in print or underlined ...
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 ...
Homo habilis is the oldest species given the designation Homo, by Leakey et al. in 1964. H. habilis is intermediate between Australopithecus afarensis and H. erectus, and there have been suggestions to re-classify it within genus Australopithecus, as Australopithecus habilis.