Word: talled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...between apes and humans. An expedition to Ethiopia led by Donald Johanson, now president of IHO, painstakingly pieced together a remarkable ancient primate skeleton. Although about 60% of the bones, including much of the skull, were missing, the scientists could tell that the animal stood 3 ft. 6 in. tall. That seemed too short for a hominid, but the animal had an all important human characteristic: unlike any species of primate known to have come before, this creature walked fully upright. How did the researchers know? The knee joint was built in such a way that the animal could fully...
...missing link came when Johanson's team assembled fossil fragments, like a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle, into a fairly complete A. afarensis skull. It turned out to be much more apelike than human, with a forward-thrust jaw and chimp-size braincase. These short creatures (males were under five feet tall) were probably no smarter than the average ape. Their upright stance and bipedal locomotion, however, may have given them an advantage by freeing their hands, making them more efficient food gatherers...
...sticks for fishing termites out of their mounds (something modern chimps still do). But H. habilis deliberately hammered on rocks to crack and flake them into useful shapes. The tools were probably not used for hunting, as anthropologists once thought; H. habilis, on average, was less than 5 ft. tall and weighed under 100 lbs., and it could hardly have competed with the lions and leopards that stalked the African landscape. The hominids were almost certainly scavengers instead, supplementing a mostly vegetarian diet with meat left over from predators' kills. Even other scavengers -- hyenas, jackals and the like -- were stronger...
...habilis clan to survive as a species for 500,000 years or more, and at least one group of them apparently evolved, around 2 million years B.P., into a taller, stronger, smarter variety of human. From the neck down, Homo erectus, on average about 5 ft. 6 in. tall, was probably almost indistinguishable from a modern human. Above the neck -- well, these were still primitive humans. The skulls have flattened foreheads and prominent brow ridges like those of a gorilla or chimpanzee, and the jawbone shows no hint of anything resembling a chin. Braincases got bigger and bigger over...
Carpenter meets me outside the doors of Eliot Dining Hall for lunch. He spots the tape recorder in my hand and identifiess me first> He is tall and lea; casually dressed in a gray sweater and chinos...