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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.
LD 350-1 is now considered the earliest known specimen of the genus Homo, dating to 2.75–2.8 Ma, found in the Ledi-Geraru site in the Afar Region of Ethiopia. It is currently unassigned to a species, and it is unclear if it represents the ancestor to H. habilis and H. rudolfensis, which are estimated to have evolved around 2.4 Ma. [36]
Carl Linnaeus coined the name Homo sapiens. All modern humans are classified into the species Homo sapiens, coined by Carl Linnaeus in his 1735 work Systema Naturae. [9] The generic name Homo is a learned 18th-century derivation from Latin homō, which refers to humans of either sex. [10] [11] The word human can refer to all members of the Homo ...
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 Pan is referred to subtribe Panina, and genus Homo is included in the subtribe Hominina (see below). [10] The alternative convention uses "hominin" to exclude members of Panina: for Homo; or for human and australopithecine species.
H. floresiensis is intriguing both for its size and its age, being an example of a recent species of the genus Homo that exhibits derived traits not shared with modern humans. In other words, H. floresiensis shares a common ancestor with modern humans, but split from the modern human lineage and followed a distinct evolutionary path.
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 ...