This week’s information was really interesting to me as we learned about the evolution of primates and how it makes us who we are. We learned about hominins, which are early primates that were closely similar to the modern human and helped lead to the modern human. Anthropologists and biologist learned these animals lived millions of years ago. We learned about traits that hominins have that are closely related to the modern human such as, bipedalism and
The first trait that hominins had like the modern human is bipedalism, which meant they walked on two feet instead of like the normal primate and walked on all fours. Even though primates could walk on two feet that wasn’t their primary locomotion movement. This was the most interesting trait to me because when thinking of an animal we think automatically think they walk on all fours and humans are bipedal. Learning that these hominins helped us evolved into what we are today. Anthropologists have found evidence that proves these primates were bipedal. One thing is by looking at the femur, when animals are bipedal the femur is a lot stronger versus any other species. Anthropologist found other evidence related to bipedalism such as, the foramen magnum. They found that the foramen magnum would be located at the bottom of the skull when being bipedal. If they walked on all fours, the foramen magnum would be in the back of the skull, which is saying the body is behind the skull versus the body being below the skull when being bipedal.
Another trait that was found in hominins that helped lead to the development of humans was that they had shorter legs and longer arms, which was good for climbing trees but wasn’t good for walking very far. As they evolved and we evolved we were evolved with longer legs to help with walking longer distances. Another trait that evolved was that they had really large molars and smaller front teeth, which then evolved into bigger front teeth and smaller molars.
Its amazing as to what we can learn about ancestors from millions of years ago by fossils and remains.
I agree with you, this week’s information was really interesting learning about the evolution of primates and how it makes us who we are. About hominins, which are early primates that were closely similar to the modern human and helped lead to the modern human. It was so much information, and Its amazing to see what we can learn about ancestors from millions of years ago by fossils and remains. Somebody was here before is and throughout time they evolved and were the new species of them. Great post
Hello, I do too agree with your post on how we think that all animals may all walk on fours, but when we think of Hominins and their traits are alot similar to humans many ways. Also, we are able to understand that there is so many characteristics that hominins have that are also relating to human form too. This topic allows us to learn about our ancestors and how they were able to find these findings about the hominin species that lived over 1 million years ago. I like that hominins were able to help with the characteristics of humans as well. I think that info was really great to learn because we can see that there is a animals that have this ability to help visually create humans in different shapes and forms.
I liked how you talked about the development of the traits (why they changed). I also thought it was interesting that they could tell that these hominins were bipedal based on the location of the Magnus foremen on their skull and how the trend in length of the arms/legs showed their increased reliance on their legs for locomotion. Observing humans and non-human primates now, it is fascinating to see how “primitive” and “derived” traits have evolved with each species. A lot of primates, that do have the ability to be bipedal, still rely on their “primitive” feature of longer arms for locomotion as well. Not only that they still have larger canines for fighting as well. And we are still so different and complex from them in terms of language and learning. It makes me wonder what and where the degree on evolution happen to push us so far to where we are now.
Hi Alexis! I really enjoyed how you talked about the key factors that help us better understand modern hominins. When people bring up animals, I too think of mammals walking on four legs. However, this week’s lecture definitely made me realize that considering we are humans, we are also animals that are bipedal. Moreover, there had to be an evolutionary transition that made animals evolve to walk on two legs instead of four. We learned this in the lecture when it discussed weather changes, aka environmental changes that made this evolutionary trait come about. It really is amazing to figure out so many different historical events that happened through fossils and mosaic evolution. We can compare primitive characteristics as well as the modern human characteristics in order to get a better understanding of our history and evolution.
Hey! I also really liked this weeks material. Hominins are apart of a larger group called hominids. This group includes us humans, orangutans , chimpanzees and gorillas. After finding out about how hominins had the trait of shorter legs and longer arms it made more sense why they can walk on two legs but they don’t because it’s more comfortable for those animals to crawl and climb instead. Lastly, I had no idea before this week that they can tell if a primate are bipedal by looking at their femur. Primates who are bipedal have a stronger femur than non bipedal animals since they use their femur to help them stand.
Hi Alexis, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog post and found it to be very informative and interesting. I also believe that primates and their evolutionary history are extremely important and make us who we are. I believe that hominis are very closely related to modern humans, our bodies and behaviors. I talked about bipedalism as well and how it is one of the closest related traits between hominins and humans. Since hominins decided to walk like this, and we evolved from them, we also walk like this now. I also thought that humans were one of the only bipedal species so it was really cool to me to see that hominins used to be bipedal as well. Overall, we are greatly related to hominins and it’s really cool to see how.
Hey! I enjoyed that you focused on leg lengths in hominin evolution! I never really thought about how we were more or less specialized to travel longer distances. This paired with our ability to be in variable environments seems to have freed us to span the entire world. I’m impressed by the detail that you provided in this post, and attests to the richness of this weeks material. Much of this information was new for me, so it was interesting to gain a more complete narrative about our distant past. I also found bipedalism the most interesting to me, because it seems so characteristic of humans! It would be interesting to hear aboout theories of why bipedalism became better for hominins.
I also found this weeks lectures extremely interesting as it took a look into defining features and traits that we obtained through our early hominin cousins. I enjoyed how you touched on the and related the bipedalism of early hominins which proves our evolutionary origins from apes. I also thought it was interesting how you touched on the brain structure with the foramen magnum which would indicate whether or not the mammal would have bipedal capabilities. Additionally enjoyed how you compared leg lengths. I too found it cool that as we evolved we can see the trait of height becoming much more prevalent. It was said in our lectures that the taller the animal/mammal the more efficient its strides and footsteps are. But at a certain height might become much more innefficient. I believe that humans currently could be at one if its most peak efficiencies of height and stride length.
Hi Alexis, I also found this weeks material interesting and enjoyed learning about the transition from our ancestors to who we are today. Something that I always believed prior to this course was that humans descended from apes and chimpanzees since we have so much shared DNA. The lectures this week really demonstrated how changes such as bipedalism and of the teeth shape/size occurred in a common ancestor and developed into a new species. I think it makes sense that bipedalism was the first step towards evolving into humans because it allowed for early hominins to be more mobile. I really enjoyed learning about how the chronological dating was able to pinpoint accurate dates at when these traits may have evolved and this makes it easier to create a phylogenetic tree of our ancestors.
Hi, Alexis. It is important that you mentioned all these evolution process finally makes us who we are. I agree with you that when I looked at and learned the changes via the tree of primate evolution, I felt very proud. As modern human, we have experienced so many changes, including the changes in locomotion, the accommodation for bipedalism, for a larger brain, and what’s more, for the developments of our community and our unique human culture. I think on one hand, we should be proud of all these evolutions and adaptations we have made, and on the other hand. On the other hand, we should also respect the other species, since many of them have an even longer history than modern humans. At last, you have provided great analysis about the changes in teeth and molars.
I agree this weeks information was very different from anything I have really learned before. It was kind of confusing at first to keep track of all of the different species names but I found it really interesting picturing the big family tree of all the different primates. I liked that you mentioned the shorter legs and longer arms. I thought it was interesting to learn about how they were initially developed like this for climbing and living in the trees. I also thought it was cool to see that we had developed longer legs as we have evolved to be able to walk longer distances as we changed our diets hence the change in teeth too that was seen. You did a great job and I really enjoyed reading your post.
Hi Alexis!
I also thought this weeks lecture was very interesting. In fact, the two traits I was intrigued by the most was the bipedalism and teeth forms as well. Bipedalism is an extremely defining trait of humans. I like how you pointed out that when we think of animals we think that they always used all four, occasionally go up on two legs, but for the most part use all fours. However, when we learn about bipedalism, hominins that relate to primates and humans were bipedal. In addition, I thought it was fascinating that by looking at the placement of the foramen magnum scientists could determine whether or not the primate or hominin was quadrupeds or bipeds. Then, with the changing of teeth of the hominins, we could see how as evolution went on, we got closer to the teeth we have today. Some hominins had large molars and small front teeth, where others had large canines. However, eventually we reached smaller teeth because we do not have to use our mouth for survival anymore.
Hi Alexis! I also found the bipedal locomotion hominin trait very interesting. In some hominin species, we see bipedal locomotion as a way to balance the weight of the body on the two legs. They put weight on one leg at a time just like us. The bipedal locomotion similarity is very insightful. I also found the foramen magnum part very informative because it helps us determine if an organism used bipedal locomotion. This piece of information can also be used for studying fossils and early hominins. Like some hominins, we have smaller canines. Large canines were used by some hominins for fighting and defense. It was common in animals who used quadrupedal locomotion because it was more advantageous to them. We don’t necessarily require large canines for meat. Humans are an example of that.
Hi Alexis, nice blog! I also talked about bipedalism and the foramen magnum in my blog post. In terms of those two terms, I agree with you that the concepts are important to look into when wanting to become more knowledgeable about modern human biology. I liked that you included information about the differences in the femur in relation to the differences in placement of the foramen magnum. That not only gave me an additional piece of information but it also put the fact that there are many parts of our bodies, and other traits, that can help us learn about how we evolved to what we are today. In terms of limbs, I agree that this is another important trait to help us learn because it allows us to see how out non-human ancestors were able to move around, gather food, and live; and it also allows us to see how our limbs evolved, and how the ways in which we use our limbs to move around, gather food, and live have evolved.
Hi Alexis,
I also think it is so interesting how we find out how primates were bipedal! It is interesting to me that we can look at decaying bones from thousands of years ago and can tell the way that they lived. This information is important for us to build the picture we need to figure out exactly how how, why, and where we evolved from. I also commented on the importance of teeth! I think it is great that we can study teeth because skulls normally have some teeth when they are found. I never really thought about the fact that teeth in primates were different from ours, so vastly different that we can tell a species just from teeth. I would love to learn more about this subject.
Thanks!
Hi Alexis,
I agree with you this week’s material was super interesting along with very informational. I also agree with you that it was interesting to learn about the bipedalism of primates and how although they could walk on their feet, that was not their primary locomotion movement. I also like how you talked about how our traits have evolved and what they were used for before they were. It is very interesting to me that by just looking at bones and the way primates were built we are able to tell so much about our own history and evolution. It is also cool that we are able to look at the location where these bones may be located to find out a lot more than may have been known before.
Hi! Thank you so much for posting this! I also found this weeks information from the lectures and the readings to be super interesting. I thought bipedalism was extremely cool to learn about and see how far we, as humans, have evolved compared to our primate ancestors. Especially since bipedal apes did not use their bipedalism as their primary movement and still used climbing trees as a key form of locomotion. I liked how you talked about how traits have evolved by looking at the bone structure in primates in order to further explore our own evolution. Also, I found it interesting how important it is to look at the teeth that our primate ancestors had and how incredibly different they were compared to ours.
Hi ! Alexis
I liked how your blog post is easy to read and very informational. I agree that our ancestors were bipedal primates . Well, they were not originally built for locomotion movement even though they were able to somewhat walk. The traits you mention that shorter legs and longer arms had become evolved to longer legs for longer distance move with feet just like other traits had evolved suited for better living in environments. Also, I liked the relation between dietary pattern and teeth evolve.
Hi!
I found this weeks material very intresting and insightful as well. This weeks material was very different for me because it really went into depth on the “why” we have certain traits and how they changed or stopped during evolution. Specifically learning about bipedalism really caught my attention. I found it intresting on how this primary locomotion came about and the reason being able to travel faster and longer. It is really cool to think about how most traits evolved on the environment condition and surviving. It’s also cool how the length of the arms were longer than legs and that’s another reason why they originally spent most time and traveled using trees.
Hello Alexis!
My blog post was very similar to yours and I also felt that I found an interesting sentence in your post that I was not aware of. I am unsure if I just did not read that part, or what, but it was super cool. It was the sentence where you said that foramen magnum would be located at the bottom of the skull due to bipedalism. If you were not walking on two feet, the foramen magnum would be located at the back of the skull. I find that tremendously interesting. It also makes sense once you sit and think about it. I also did agree about your last paragraph about how you said hominins had shorter legs but longer arms. I also wrote about that in my blog post and it is actually interesting it was using for climbing trees and then how later on we developed longer legs and short arms for walking far distances. Overall, this was a great read.
Bipedalism is interesting when you think about it in the perspective that we are 98.9% like chimps – who do not always walk on all fours, and can infact still climb trees. It is the very characteristic that started to define primitive hominin to modern. It makes so much sense when you think about the environments we had to survive back then and how we had to source our food. Going from walking on all fours, with a big toe that helps us grasp, and long arms to swing about branches, to coming down from trees and adapting to the environment on the ground. This changed the way we needed to travel for food – instead needed to travel distance and cover ground. This is when our diets became more diverse – and with that the evolution of our jaws and teeth, as well as our brain capacity – requiring more energy intake to travel distances made it imperative we were getting our nutritional needs making every meal and each hunt count.
The ability to have both aspects of walking by bipedalism. Yet such bipedalism allowing them to walk on hind legs is intriguing to myself as well. These are animals that are now ever more closely starting to resemble the humans that we are today. What interests me is that if they had the opportunity to interact with early humanoids. Perhaps more closely related to us maybe not erectus. Yet something of a similar nature that would be intriguing.
It would intrigue me as I wonder how those interactions would have went down. These and other findings at least let us know that our early human ancestors from this time are getting closer and closer to the humans in which we evolutionary are today. Good Post