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Broom discovered fossils of Australopithecus that contributed to the acceptance of Dart's interpretation of the Taung child, as a transitional form between apes and anatomically modern humans. Dart's claim that Australopithecus africanus , the species name that he had given to the Taung Child, was a transitional form between apes and humans was ...
Australopithecus (/ ˌ ɒ s t r ə l ə ˈ p ɪ θ ɪ k ə s,-l oʊ-/, OS-trə-lə-PITH-i-kəs, -loh-; [1] or (/ ɒ s ˌ t r ə l ə p ɪ ˈ θ iː k ə s /, os-TRA-lə-pi-THEE-kəs [2] from Latin australis 'southern' and Ancient Greek πίθηκος (pithekos) 'ape' [3]) is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene.
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.
In 1962 it was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. [11] In 1969 Time magazine named African Genesis the most notable nonfiction book of the 1960s. [12] The book has continued to bear on the popular imagination of human nature. The theories of Dart and Ardrey flew in the face of prevailing theories of human origins.
Homininae (the hominines), is a subfamily of the family Hominidae (hominids). (The Homininae— / h ɒ m ɪ ˈ n aɪ n iː / —encompass humans, and are also called "African hominids" or "African apes".) [1] [2] This subfamily includes two tribes, Hominini and Gorillini, both having extant (or living) species as well as extinct species.
Australopithecus africanus is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived between about 3.3 and 2.1 million years ago in the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene of South Africa. [1] The species has been recovered from Taung , Sterkfontein , Makapansgat , and Gladysvale .
Australopithecus anamensis is the intermediate species between Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus afarensis and has multiple shared traits with humans and other apes. [ 30 ] [ 8 ] Fossil studies of the wrist morphology of A. anamensis have suggested knuckle-walking, which is a derived trait shared with other African apes.
Members of Australopithecus are sometimes referred to as the "gracile australopithecines", while Paranthropus are called the "robust australopithecines". [ 11 ] [ 12 ] The australopithecines occurred in the Late Miocene sub-epoch and were bipedal , and they were dentally similar to humans, but with a brain size not much larger than that of ...