Evidence From The Fossil Record

Evidence from the fossil record[edit]
Replica of fossil skull of Homo habilis. Fossil number KNM ER 1813, found at Koobi Fora, Kenya.
Replica of fossil skull of Homo ergaster (African Homo erectus). Fossil number Khm-Heu 3733 discovered
in 1975 in Kenya.
There is little fossil evidence for the divergence of the gorilla, chimpanzee and hominin lineages.
[114]
The earliest fossils that have been proposed as members of the hominin lineage
are Sahelanthropus tchadensis dating from 7 million years ago, Orrorin tugenensis dating
from 5.7 million years ago, and Ardipithecus kadabba dating to 5.6 million years ago. Each of
these have been argued to be a bipedal ancestor of later hominins but, in each case, the claims
have been contested. It is also possible that one or more of these species are ancestors of
another branch of African apes, or that they represent a shared ancestor between hominins and
other apes.
The question then of the relationship between these early fossil species and the hominin lineage
is still to be resolved. From these early species, the australopithecines arose around 4 million
years ago and diverged into robust (also called Paranthropus) and gracile branches, one of
which (possibly A. garhi) probably went on to become ancestors of the genus Homo. The
australopithecine species that is best represented in the fossil record is Australopithecus
afarensis with more than 100 fossil individuals represented, found from Northern Ethiopia (such
as the famous "Lucy"), to Kenya, and South Africa. Fossils of robust australopithecines such
as Au. robustus (or alternatively Paranthropus robustus) and Au./P. boisei are particularly
abundant in South Africa at sites such as Kromdraai and Swartkrans, and around Lake
Turkana in Kenya.
The earliest member of the genus Homo is Homo habilis which evolved around 2.8 million years
ago.[115] Homo habilis is the first species for which we have positive evidence of the use of stone
tools. They developed the Oldowan lithic technology, named after the Olduvai Gorge in which the
first specimens were found. Some scientists consider Homo rudolfensis, a larger bodied group of
fossils with similar morphology to the original H. habilis fossils, to be a separate species, while
others consider them to be part of H. habilis—simply representing intraspecies variation, or
perhaps even sexual dimorphism. The brains of these early hominins were about the same size
as that of a chimpanzee, and their main adaptation was bipedalism as an adaptation to terrestrial
living.
During the next million years, a process of encephalization began and, by the arrival
(about 1.9 million years ago) of Homo erectus in the fossil record, cranial capacity had
doubled. Homo erectus were the first of the hominins to emigrate from Africa, and,
from 1.8 to 1.3 million years ago, this species spread through Africa, Asia, and Europe. One
population of H. erectus, also sometimes classified as a separate species Homo ergaster,
remained in Africa and evolved into Homo sapiens. It is believed that these species, H.
erectus and H. ergaster, were the first to use fire and complex tools.
The earliest transitional fossils between H. ergaster/erectus and archaic H. sapiens are from
Africa, such as Homo rhodesiensis. These descendants of African H. erectus spread through
Eurasia from ca. 500,000 years ago, evolving into H. antecessor, H. heidelbergensis and H.
neanderthalensis. The earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are from the Middle
Paleolithic, about 300–200,000 years ago such as the Herto and Omo remains of Ethiopia, Jebel
Irhoud remains of Morocco, and Florisbad remains of South Africa; later fossils from Es
Skhul cave in Israel and Southern Europe begin around 90,000 years ago (0.09 million years
ago).
As modern humans spread out from Africa, they encountered other hominins such as Homo
neanderthalensis and the Denisovans, who may have evolved from populations of Homo
erectus that had left Africa around 2 million years ago. The nature of interaction between early
humans and these sister species has been a long-standing source of controversy, the question
being whether humans replaced these earlier species or whether they were in fact similar
enough to interbreed, in which case these earlier populations may have contributed genetic
material to modern humans.[116][117]
This migration out of Africa is estimated to have begun about 70–50,000 years BP and modern
humans subsequently spread globally, replacing earlier hominins either through competition or
hybridization. They inhabited Eurasia and Oceania by 40,000 years BP, and the Americas by at
least 14,500 years BP.[

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Evidence from the fossil record[edit]

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