ARCH 131 Final: ARCH 131 FINAL EXAM LEC NTOES

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Archaeology
• Course: ARCH 131
• Professor: Daniel Smith

Document Summary

Plesiomorphic trait- a primitive trait inherited by a species from their ancestor. Ex. among living apes: chimpanzees have prehensile feet in living apes (their ancestors had it among early primates). Lack of tail in human (great apes) result of the fact our ancestors had no tail. Miocene apes is when tails disappear and a plesiomorphic trait. Apomorphic traits- new or derived traits. first appear in the species in questions. Human apomorphic trait= speech is recent thing, lack of body hair coverage. Both traits useful when looking at new fossils. Evolutionary systematics- process taking fossils and figure out where it fits in our understanding of the hominins. Phylogeny- refers to actual evolutionary relationships between different organisms. Taxonomy- process of classifying organism based on available data about their phylogenetic relationships. Based on how different or similar two fossils are in their morphology (how many plesiomorphies and apomorphies do they share?) Try to organize them to what we think is their phylogeny.