ARCH 131 Lecture Notes - Evolutionary Taxonomy, Comparative Anatomy, Neanderthal
27 May 2014
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Document Summary
Nowadays a lot of time is spent by researchers hunting for new fossil hominins; especially in africa, although some very old hominin remains are found in asia and europe as well. The 2 most basic concepts are phylogeny and taxonomy: phylogeny is the actual evolutionary relationship between different organisms. Today, with dna analysis, establishing the phylogenetic relationships among living species is much easier since, presumably, the closer two organisms are related the fewer differences there will be in their dna. However, when we are dealing with just the skeletal remains of these organisms their bones - determining their actual evolutionary relationship is practically impossible. So far we have only been able to recover. Dna from the bones of two other hominin species besides us, Neandertals and a newly discovered species we will be introduced to later, but these are relatively recent skeletons: from within the last 100,000 years.
