Apelike hominids that walked upright, still image with audio
Description:
Apelike hominids that walked upright, still image with audio
Transcript:
When we come on to this time period, we know quite a lot about Australopithecus afarensis, and we have a contemporaneous form called Kenyanthropus. So again even here, apparently two distinct forms. And this one is pretty well known from partial skeletons, and we can see that this creature, although it walked upright, was still in many respects quite apelike, and we imagine that its way of life was fundamentally apelike. As we move on, we still have this rather, if you like, apelike face, we're talking about, essentially, apes that walked upright, but some of them became quite specialized. And here we've got dietary adaptations where we have an enlargement of the molar and pre-molar teeth, probably to eat small, hard food objects, and these are the robust australopithicines. They seem to be a separate lineage that died out, somewhat over one million years ago.
Keywords:
molar teeth,one million years,partial skeletons,chris stringer,afarensis,hominids,adaptations,apes,lineage,way of life,respects,time period
Human origins expert Chris Stringer talks about the beginning of the hominid family tree using an exhibit currently installed at the Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Many researchers believe that the common ancestor of apes and humans was built for life in the trees. The major adaptation of the hominid branch of our family tree was bipedalism, the ability to walk on two legs. This ability allowed our ancestors to cove