Anthropology 2100 Lecture Notes - Kenyapithecus, Paranthropus Aethiopicus, Laetoli
31 Jan 2013
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Document Summary
The fossil record is expanding rapidly and thus is getting more and more complex and the age of mammals runs from 65 million years ago to present. The paleocene saw the emergence of the first rodent/ape like creatures. In the oligocene things got more ape like and the miocene saw proliferation of apes (our ancestors here) Pliocene has hominids close to the human line and this is the period most important for human evolution and finally there is the pleistocene with full fledged humans. This theory blends the theories of darwin and mendel and evolution is a change in the genetic make-up of a population from one generation to the next and a population is a group of interbreeding individuals. Genetic variation is produced by mutation (a random change in a gene) and genetic recombination (when an egg cell combines with a sperm cell)
