From prehistoric hominids to modern humans, video

The California Academy of Sciences in the USA writes about this video:

March 29, 2013

One of the oldest fossils ever discovered dated at 3.2 million years old, “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis) provided scientists evidence of bipedal, upright walking by human ancestors. In this animation, see what similarities Lucy shares with modern humans.

Trace the milestones of our species’ fascinating history in a dramatic addition to Tusher African Hall.

For more information visit http://www.calacademy.org/human-odyssey/.

South African hominid discoveries: here.

How climate change may have shaped human evolution: here.

A 14,000-year-old fragment of thigh bone found in a cave in China may represent evidence of the unexpected survival of long-vanished human ancestors. If so, then right into and through the ice age, a creature that was either Homo habilis or Homo erectus survived alongside the Neanderthals, the unknown humans who left behind some DNA in a cave in Siberia, the mysterious so-called hobbit of the island of Flores in Indonesia, and modern Homo sapiens. But by the end of this multicultural ice age 10,000 years ago, only one human species survived: here.

Europe, not Africa, might have spawned the first members of the human evolutionary family around 7 million years ago, researchers say. Tooth characteristics of a chimpanzee-sized primate that once lived in southeastern European suggest that the primate, known as Graecopithecus, may have been a hominid, not an ape as many researchers assume. One tooth in particular, the second lower premolar, is telling. It features two partially fused roots, a trait characteristic of early hominids but not ancient apes, a team led by geoscientist Jochen Fuss of the University of Tübingen in Germany reports May 22 in PLOS ONE: here.

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• How Hands Made Humans Human
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• 300,000 Year Old Wood Tools from Schöningen

• Blog Post 5 (discoveringlucy.wordpress.com)
• First Love Child of Human, Neanderthal Found (livescience.com)
• Best-Preserved Human Ancestor Didn’t Have Bone Disorder (livescience.com)
• Trove of Neanderthal fossils found in Greek cave (science.nbcnews.com)
• When did humans leave Africa? (evoanth.wordpress.com)