This week’s lectures and videos were very interesting, because we were focusing on the concepts of paleoanthropology. Paleoanthropology is the study of fossil hominids. It focuses on the early development of humans, and how it contributes to human evolution, and the connections between our processors and us today. I’ve never been interested in fossils or really knew anything about them really, but I feel like I learned a lot of new and interesting information.
One hominid trait is bipedalism which is a form of land locomotion where an organism moves by means of its two rear limbs or legs. I knew that the movement from walking on four legs to two was a very important step in evolution and is why humans flourished. It was interesting to read that some of the primitive hominids started to evolve and develop not our exact functioning of bipedalism but a “primitive” versions of it. I learn a very interesting fact about how to tell if a primitive hominid was biped or not and it was by looking at the skull and more specifically the foramen magnum. If a hominid was walking on all fours the foramen magnum would be placed slightly at the back of the skull, unlike bipedal whose would be underneath the skull suggesting that the body was underneath the skull. Anthropologists use early hominids like Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenensis, and Ardipithecus ramidus as framework to show how this trait affected human evolution. Fossils that have been found throughout the years, and they show how the primitive features of early hominids prospectively start to disappear and slowly become more human-esque. Many changes in our evolution from where we are to where we are known are because of the ever changing climate. When it started to get colder and forest started to die many early primates did as well while others started to evolve. Bipedalism was a key factor in what separated early hominids from early primates.
Another hominid trait is a large brain. In many past classes it was stated that the growth of our large brain is what separated us from our early ancestors. Throughout this week’s lectures as early hominids started to develop bipedalism, their brains relatively grew as well. The growth our brain allowed us to grow and size as well. In the lecture none of our early hominids had yet to evolve the large brain however many did start to form the sexual dimorphism of body and teeth.
Fossilized skeletal remains of early human ancestors can help anthropologists reconstruct and learn from the past. For instance, Lucy, the fossils that were found and were up to 80% completely with mirroring technology. From the fossils that were found they figured how she was an adult, around 3’3″ and weighed around 60 pounds. That fact alone is incredible and from that some anthropologist can recreate environments that the said species use to live in. With this information they can determine what the time Lucy lived in. Altogether I thought this week’s lectures were very intriguing.
While I was reading your blog of the section on the foramen magnum I didn’t think of it in the way you put it. I think your example of the foramen magnum being placed slightly at the back of the skull would be mean that a hominid would be quadruped and if the foramen magnum is placed under the skull that means the hominid would be bipedal was great. This really makes it easy to learn if someone has no knowledge of this topic. I agree Lucy was a great example of how fossilized skeletal remains of early human ancestors can help anthropologists reconstruct and learn from the past. I find it very interesting that sometimes from finding these fossils, anthropologists are able to figure out a story of what that hominid was doing back when it was alive.