Word: erectus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...modern human beings. They know about Lucy, the upright-walking proto-human australopithecine that strode the continent some 3.2 million years ago; about Homo habilis, the first known human species, which was making and using stone tools in the same region by 1.2 million years later; about Homo erectus, which emerged from Africa soon thereafter and spread across the world...
...paleontologists can't be sure that they are from the same species. But like the skull, these fossils show a mix of primitive and advanced traits. Australopithecus afarensis, which lived between 3.6 million and 2.9 million years ago, had forearms that were long compared with its legs, while Homo erectus, which appeared about 1.7 million years ago, had shortened forearms and longer legs, more like modern humans. The new fossils fall right in the middle, both chronologically and anatomically, suggesting that the leg bones lengthened at least a million years before the forearm bones shrank...
Richard, meanwhile, continued his rise to prominence. Fossil finds such as the astonishingly complete 1.6 million-year-old skeleton of an African Homo erectus (Homo ergaster to some) and the Black Skull have added immeasurably to our knowledge of human origins. His career benefited from best-selling books, a television series on human evolution and popular lecture tours...
...journal Science Friday, it's not in the caves of Zhoudoudian, China. What was previously thought to be a 500,000-year-old fireplace there turns out to lack the tell-tale traces of wood ash. That leaves us with no evidence that our distant ancestor Homo Erectus had any idea how to set the world alight. Which is a problem, because Homo Erectus is supposed to have been busy colonizing the coldest climes of Asia back then. How on earth did he do it without a way to keep the home fires burning? "In essence," said biologist Steve Weiner...
...been a good place to dig. Its equatorial climate makes it home to countless species, and periodic land bridges placed it in the middle of the migratory autobahn between Asia and Australia, making it the perfect spot to study how animals spread. Since the 1890s, numerous fossils of Homo erectus have been found on the island, but scientists were particularly intrigued by more than a dozen partial skulls found near the villages of Ngandong and Sambungmacan in the 1930s and 1970s. The skulls had unusually large braincases, and so were estimated to be anywhere from...