I really enjoyed this week’s lecture. I haven’t studied the fossil record at all during my time at MSU, so this week was full of new information for me. I loved learning about the many different types of hominins and where they were found. I didn’t realize that modern day humans shared so many traits with hominins. I also thought it was so interesting the way we can trace back out ancestors and how much can be learned from a partially complete fossil, like Lucy. Fossils, which are mineral casts of bones, can tell us a lot about our closely related primate ancestors. Fossils are the preserved biological remains or traces of living organisms from the past and serve as solid evidence of evolution. Fossil evidence provides us with a unique view of the history of life and is extremely important in our efforts to reconstruct the past and understand evolutionary change. The information we gain from studying fossils is extremely important and provides us with insight into the biological and behavioral evolution of our ancestors.

In lecture, we learned about early hominin diversity and its impact on the progression of human evolution. A large amount of diversity amongst hominins illustrates the relationship between evolution and the adaptation to changing environments. This diversity and its impact on human evolution is a clear indication of how successfully we adapted to our environment. For example, hominin diversity signifies the hominin adaptations that occurred during a time where the environment was rapidly changing. This provided unique challenges and opportunities for human evolution. Hominin diversity helped us see how human evolution came about. During different time periods, different hominins would have features that were more similar to the humans now. It shows how they were able to adapt to change and survive. Even though the exact time period when these changes occurred has still to been found, those time periods can help show what was happening in these hominins environment that helped them change to the way they were. Another example provided in the lecture is the idea of how sharp canines have become less prominent overtime in human evolution. Canines used to be used as a primary form of defense for primates in the past. The ability to jump forward and bite with a canine as a way to attack or defend oneself, is an evolutionary strategy that was implemented in the past.

The study of the fossil remains from ancestors has been extremely useful in understanding how they lived and evolved over time . It truly helps us as humans understand ourselves even better.  By studying the surrounding environment and day to day activities from the remains, scientists are able to piece by piece put things together in order to have a good understanding of where we came from. Fossils of our ancestors enable us to observe the evolutionary route that we have been, and still are, journeying through. Also, it will allow us to further understand the past and, potentially, the future.