11/23/14
Human Evolution
Darwins shocking idea...
It is...probable that Africa was formerly
inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the
gorilla and chimpanzee, and as these two
species are now mans nearest allies, it is
somewhat more probable that our early
progenitors lived on the African continent
than elsewhere. (from The Descent of Man)
Dryopithicus found in 1856
Java man Homo erectus
found 1896
Primates = Apes + Humans
Catarrhini
Old World Monkeys
baboons
macaques
new world monkeys
Great Apes
gibbon, orangutan,
gorilla, chimpanzee,
human
old world monkeys
human & ape
synapomorphies:
24 source trees inferred from mitochondrial DNA, nuclear DNA, and retroposon characters
11/23/14
Human evolution:
Hominid the group consisting of all
modern and extinct Great Apes (that is,
modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas
and orangutans plus all their immediate
ancestors).
Hominin the group consisting of modern
humans, extinct human species and all our
immediate ancestors (including members
of the genera Homo, Australopithecus,
Paranthropus)
Among all hominoids,
evolutionary changes in
humans allowed them to take
bipedal terrestrial
locomotion the furthest!
several anatomical adaptations underlie human bipedalism:
curved lower spine, shorter, broader pelvis; angled femur; lengthened lower
limbs, enlarged joint surface areas; extensible knee joint, platform foot, enlarged
great toe; movement of foramen magnum toward center of basicranuim
11/23/14
origin of bipedalism?
the family tree - based on fossils
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/human-family-tree
The Fossil Record:
Ardipithecus Group: 7 to 4.4. mya
oldest member of the family so far:
Sahelanthropus tchadensis aka Toumai
skull was crushed...
found in 2001 in Chad, dating
~7 mya, mostly complete
cranium with a small brain
(between 320 and 380 cc)
comparable in size to that of
chimpanzees.
human-like features:
flattened face
reduced canine teeth
enlarged cheek teeth
More upright posture
Ororrin tugenensis
5.72-5.59 mya, found in Kenya,
fossils include fragmentary arm
and thigh bones, lower jaws, and
teeth
lived near the time DNA data
suggest our oldest hominin
ancestor split from the oldest
ancestor of the great apes
Key hominin features:
Teeth have thick enamel
Muscle & ligament attachment sites
indicate erect gait
11/23/14
Ardipithecus ramidus 4.4 mya
partial skeleton and
indirect evidence from
skeletal fragments
indicate that this species
may have walked upright
Structures marking the
articulation of the spine
with the skull are more
forwardly located in
humans rather than in
apes, while the base is
shorter front to back.
A. kadabba subspecies of A. ramidus?
Mandibular fragments date back 5.5
mya and appear to be distinct.
Hominid-like A. ramidus cranial base
Australopithecus Group:
A. anamensis - 3.9-4.2mya (knee joint
Paranthropus aethiopicus 2.7-2.3
suggest stress from walking upright)
A. afarensis (clearly bipedal) -
mya (known from 1 specimen; baffling mixture of primitive
3.0-3.9mya; Lucy
and advanced traits)
P. robustus - 1.5-2 mya
P. boisei - 1.4-2.3 mya;
A. bahrelghazali - 3.4 mya
A. garhi - 2.5 mya, larger teeth
A. africanus - 2.4-2.8mya (curve of lower
P. robustus
largest teeth & jaws
spine similar to modern humans, thus walked
similarly; larger molars)
Nutcracker man
A. africanus skull
Lucy
11/23/14
Homo Group
GAME OF THRONES!!!
larger brain size, flatter face, no skull crest,
reduced brow ridges, smaller cheek teeth,
reduced canine teeth
H. rudolfensis - 1.8-2.4 mya
H. habilis - 1.6 - 1.9 mya (680 cc brain;
hand axe
1.5 mya
handy-man - precision grip)
H. erectus - 1.5 - 1.8 mya (1,000 cc brain
size; pelvis and thigh bones allow for long
strides)
NATURE PAPER (Oct. 2013), Lordkipanidze et al.
A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the
Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo
This implies the
existence of a single
evolving lineage of
early Homo, with
phylogeographic
continuity across
continents
1.77 - 1.85 mya
first completely preserved adult hominid skull from the early Pleistocenecombines
a small braincase (546 cubic centimeters) with a large prognathic face and exhibits
close morphological affinities with the earliest known Homo fossils from Africa
H. heidelbergensis - 200 - 700 Ka
The first truly cosmopolitan species of Homo, is
first known from Africa at ca. 600 Ka , before
appearing at sites in Europe and eastern Asia from
ca. 500 Ka onward. (stone tools similar to H.
erectus)
H. neanderthalensis 28,000 - 200 Ka
H. sapiens - 200 Ka to present
uniquely derived among hominids in the
structure of its skull and postcranial
skeleton
Specimens commonly deemed H. erectus (Schwartz et al., 2014)
La Chapelle-aux-Saints
11/23/14
H. floresiensis?
Remains of the most recently discovered
early human species, (nicknamed
Hobbit), have been found between
95,000 and 17,000 years ago on the Island
of Flores, Indonesia
individuals stood approximately 3 feet 6
inches tall, had tiny brains, large teeth for
their small size, shrugged-forward
shoulders, no chins, receding foreheads,
and relatively large feet due to their short
legs.
Downs syndrome?
Strong words over Hobbit
mtDNA tree
out of Africa hypothesis supported by genetic data
the earliest fossils
that resembled
members of our
species came from
southern and
eastern Africa.
650,000 genetic
markers in nearly
1,000 individuals
from 51 populations
around the globe
11/23/14
Y chromosome tree
relationships among humans and extant apes
phylogeny of COX I
(mtDNA) aligns Pan as
sister taxa to Homo
genomic phylogeny aligns
Gorilla as nearest relative
MRCA = most recent common ancestor
T1 and T2 denote the speciation events of humans and chimpanzees, and of
gorillas, respectively.
Gene trees dont always line up
with species trees-
If the ancestral species was
genetically variable for the
region under study, then the
gene tree estimated from
sequence data may differ from
the true species tree
If the ancestral species
was genetically variable
for the region under
study, then the gene
tree estimated from
sequence data may
differ from the true
species tree
selective sweeps in the
humanchimp ancestral
species would remove
any ancestral
polymorphisms and,
thus, result in islands in
our genome, where
incongruent sequence
trees are depleted
23,210 alignments of human, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and rhesus DNA
sequences from randomly chosen regions of the human genome using maximum
likelihood. We infer that for about 23% of our data set chimpanzees are not the
closest genetic relatives to humans... (Ebersberger et al. 2007)
