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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.
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.
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.
'Human Biology and Behaviour: An anthropological perspective (4th ed.). Boston: Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-673-39013-4. (Note: this book contains very accessible descriptions of human and non-human primates, their evolution, and fossil history). Wells, Spencer (2004). The Journey of Man : A Genetic Odyssey. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks.
The Florisbad Skull is an important human fossil of the early Middle Stone Age, representing either late Homo heidelbergensis or early Homo sapiens. It was discovered in 1932 by T. F. Dreyer at the Florisbad site, Free State Province, South Africa.
[2] [5] The classification H. habilis began to receive wider acceptance as more fossil elements and species were unearthed. [2] In 1983, Tobias proposed that A. africanus was a direct ancestor of Paranthropus and Homo (the two were sister taxa ), and that A. africanus evolved into H. habilis which evolved into H. erectus which evolved into ...
Archaeological evidence suggests that there was a tenfold increase in the modern human population in Western Europe during the period of the Neanderthal/modern human transition, [136] and Neanderthals may have been at a demographic disadvantage due to a lower fertility rate, a higher infant mortality rate, or a combination of the two. [137]
Homo heidelbergensis (in Africa also known as Homo rhodesiensis) had long been thought to be a likely candidate for the last common ancestor of the Neanderthal and modern human lineages. However, genetic evidence from the Sima de los Huesos fossils published in 2016 seems to suggest that H. heidelbergensis in its entirety should be included in ...