Sunday, October 30, 2011

Who's Who Among Early Hominins

Susman, Randall. "'Who's Who Among the Early Hominins?'" Odyssey: Adventures in Science Oct. 2009: 22-25. Print.

I read an article named "Who's Who Among Early Hominins?" it was quite interesting. It told me about twelve different species of early Hominins. Early Hominins means early men. All of these species of animals are part human and part ape. Also some are tree dwellers bipeds, and knuckle walkers. An example of one of these species is Homo Floresiensis. They used tools and they are not that old, they are only 94,000 years old, also they have larger brains. Another type is Paranthropus, they are close to men. They are around 2.5 million years old. The species that we are in is Homo. Homo erectus are about 1.8 million years old and they have bigger brains. So as you can see, human origins are a very long topic with some very long names such as, Orrorin Tugononsis, Ardipthecus, Kenyapithecus Platyops, and Homo Georgicus


As the author says, "To name the various groups of Hominins scientists traditionally use Latin, Greek, and Arabic origin from the language spoke where a fossil is found" I found that interesting because I was always curious why the names were so long.


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