The two main characteristics of hominids are bipedalism and big brains. The brain or the skull, has increased in size over time to allow for the enlargement of the brain. It has also changed shape. The skull now has more forehead and a rounder shape. There is less separation between the brain and the face. The face has gotten flatter, the nose is less of a snout and humans have small teeth and jaws in comparison to the modern apes. Big brains allow for more learned behavior, such as using tools. All hominids are able to walk upright. The human anatomy has had to adjust in a variety of different ways to help them with walking right. The foramen magnum, which attaches the spinal cord to the brain, is at the bottom of the skull, rather than at the back. This allows hominids to see straight ahead. The vertebrae of hominids vary in size from the top of the spine to the bottom. They are smaller at the top and larger at the bottom. The spine of hominids also curves, which helps to support the weight of the body, in an upright position. The femur, which is the thigh bone in hominids, is angled towards the knee, which stabilizes the body in relation to gravity. Bipedalism can make it hard to balance and humans often fall, mainly when they’re elderly. It can also cause back pain. These traits are very detailed and it allow humans to understand the hominin species more in depth.
By studying fossil records we can tell how long life has existed on Earth, and how different plants and animals are related to each other. Often we can work out how and where they lived, and use this information to find out about ancient environments. Fossils can tell us a lot about the past.
I enjoyed reading your blog and it seems that we focused on similar things in our responses. I also talked about how bipedalism and the resulting intelligence boom were the most important hominin features. Like you, I talked about the positioning of the foramen magnum being underneath the skull instead of behind it being a very important trait to have for bipedalism. Like you said this positions the spine to be underneath the body and allows for greater support. I noticed you talked about the femur which I found very interesting. I must have missed that piece of information, but this along with the ability of our knee joints to lock greatly reduces the amount of energy we have to expend walking upright compared to other great apes who don’t have these features.
Deniqua,
I really enjoyed reading your post because you talked about some of the things that I did not in my own blog post, but I was extremely engaged in reviewing those through your post. I also enjoyed being able to hear your personal thoughts on these things, specifically, how you explained the concepts of the skull/brain changes that took place over time. From my experiences with evolutionary psychology, I am familiar with what you said about the foramen magnum. I did not know about thee vertebrae, though. Nor did I realize that our femurs are angled to help us with the gravitational force we experience here on Earth. I find it interesting how you used that explanation to explain back pain and our elderly counterparts. Your post was very insightful!
Hi Deniqua,
I mentioned similar traits such as bipedalism and the size of the brains. However, one aspect that was a bit different than what you said is the big brains. From what I took from the study of the past organisms, all their brain sizes seem to compare to be smaller than the human brain. I can see what you mean that the size of the brain enlarged over time as we see in our own brains today. However, present day primates such as chimps, is what the size of the hominins’ brains were compared to.
One last thought I had is that I appreciate your statement on studying fossil records and that can further our knowledge of previous life on Earth to relate that to our present day organisms, including ourselves
Hello Deniqua!
I found your blog post to be a great read. I agree with a lot of what you said and I actually wrote my blog post about the same few things. I truly like how detailed you got into the aspects of the physicality of humans compared to non-humans. That was one thing I did not do. Well, I named the main things but did not go into great detail, which you did, which I believe to have been very cool. One thing I read that I did not know about was how you mentioned the femur. I am unsure as to if I did not read that part, but either way that was a very interesting sentence. Once you think about it you truly understand why everything is the way it is. You explained how the femur is basically there to help people stand up straight and have balance. I truly never thought of that before so I find it interesting you added it in there. Overall, very good read!