One hominin trait that can inform us about modern biology is the canines of the genera Ardipithecus, who are the best known of the early hominin. They had larger canines then we do now. Ours don’t go past our other teeth, at least not by much, and we only use them for eating, but they probably used theirs for fighting as well. A way that this has effected human evolution is because while their canines were larger than ours, they were smaller than those of the Chimpanzee, showing the chain of evolution. They also had a smaller brain, but a grasping big toe, which also shows them being in the middle.

A second hominin trait is the sexual dimophism of the Australopithecus afarensis. Males were much bigger than females, which continued down to humans, but now not as much. Size wise they were in between apes and humans, showing the evolution. They probably spent a lot of time in trees like our ancestors did, studied in a previous lecture. They also had similar features of the pelvis and legs, so they were most likely fully bi-pedal, like humans are now.

A third trait is the footprint of the footprints are afarensis. Their footprints were almost identical to ours, showing that they walk heel first, pressing off with their big toe. They had the same stride and were also adaptable to many different environments. This has affected human evolution because it shows a species that had continued to evolve further and closer to present day humans.

Fossilized skeletal remains of early human ancestors can help anthropologists reconstruct and learn from the past because they can use methods like radioactive decay to determine the general time frame when those species existed. By comparing eras, they can see how evolution varied throughout time. They can also compare fossils of certain species to others from the same species to see how individuals varied. They can compare fossils from seperate time periods to see the differences, which can help to predict how evolution will continue. Comparing things like the size of teeth, brains, and the shape of fingers and toes have showed the evolution of hominins living in trees, using their teeth for ways other than eating, and grasping branches to using tools, critical thinking, and only using teeth for eating. Finding fossils from long ago can also helps scientists to theorize what creatures from even earlier time periods may have looked like and acted.

While anthropologists have incomplete pictures of some species, they can use mirror imaging and similar fossils to create a hypothesis, like with the fossil “Lucy”. They don’t have all of the parts for her, yet have a 80% complete picture of how she probably looked, using these tools.

Learning about the traits of earlier hominins, we can see how they have evolved to adapt to the world and become who we are today. The world will continue to evolve, especially due to things like global warming, so humans will also have to adapt and evolve in order to survive.

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