ANT100Y1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Biostratigraphy, Mosaic Evolution, Australopithecus Afarensis
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ANT100Y1 Full Course Notes
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About 3 mya, hominins began to evolve larger brains, a trend accelerated starting 1. 8 mya. Why bigger brains: ecological hypothesis: to improve their ability to hunt or forage for unpredictable food resources. Needed to improve their mental maps: epiphenomenal hypothesis: an increase in hominin body size resulted in a concomitant increase in brain size, social brain hypothesis: needed larger brains to deal with the increasing complexity of their social organization. I. e. natural selection favored individuals with an increased ability to network: bipedalism. And luck: accurate dating of fossil hominins is important for 2 reasons, critical to determining a chronological framework for the hominins, there is a strong interest in determining the oldest evidence for hominins and their material remains, two categories of dating method: relative and absolute, relative dating: involves determining whether a fossil or the sediment it is buried in is younger or older than another fossil or sediment.