Word: homo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That really should not be surprising. Most types of animals--monkeys, whales, cats, apes--come in multiple varieties. As recently as 30,000 or 40,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens was sufficiently evolved to make jewelry and paint hauntingly evocative drawings on cave walls, we shared the planet with a second hominid species, the Neanderthals. And although it seems natural to us that only one species of hominid lives today, it is in fact an exception to nature's way of doing things...
...million years ago. That presumed great-great-great-grandape almost certainly swung from trees in the African forest. If so, then Sahelanthropus, or Toumai, could well have been the very first hominid, or at least one of the first, to begin the evolutionary march that ultimately led to Homo sapiens...
...like the Neanderthals. That would make them not our great-great-great-grandparents but rather ancient uncles and aunts whose lineages have long since gone extinct. One possibility is that Sahelanthropus gave rise to intermediate descendant species that have not yet been discovered. These descendants would have led to Homo habilis or Homo rudolfensis, both of which are contenders for the first member of our genus, which arose about 2 million years...
...faces, she has no trouble picking out those that are happy, sad or angry. But if the face is displaying fear, she cannot recognize the feeling. She identifies it as a face expressing some intense emotion, but that is all. Her unusual condition strongly suggests that even in Homo sapiens, fear takes hold in the amygdala...
James J. McCarthy This precious planet earth will be a better place for all peoples if your generation decides to tread more gently upon it than did your parents and their ancestors. During your lifetime we have learned that one species, Homo sapiens, is now altering Earth’s climate at unprecedented rates...