ANT101H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Acheulean, Brain Size, Laetoli
Document Summary
Explain the general time depth for the earliest primates and explain how they may (or not) be related to living primates. Define what a hominin is and explain what sort of evidence is used to determine whether a fossil form is a hominin. Describe the time depth and geographical location of early hominins and explain how they relate to later hominins (including us) Hominins evolved from earlier primates (dating back to almost 50 mya) Paleoanthropologists have made many exciting discoveries from several sites in africa. The earliest members of the human family were confined to africa. Much later their descendants disperse from the african continent to other areas of the old. The earliest primates evolved from early and still primitive placental mammals. The earliest primates date to the paleocene (65-66 mya) and belong to a large and diverse group of primitive mammals called the plesiadapforms.