What are the fossils of ancient humans

Contents

What are the fossils of ancient humans?

About the discoveries of human fossils

Oldest human fossils

-What are the fossils of ancient humans?

The fossils of ancient humans are the oldest fossils of ancient humans, and Neanderthals are the first ancient humans to gain scientific and popular recognition, as their fossils began to be found in Europe in the nineteenth century, but scientists did not have any perspective or framework evolutionary interpretation of them, and decades passed before they were recognized as a different and extinct form of archaic humans.

Opinions about the relationship between our species and Neanderthals are constantly changing, with scientists in the early twentieth century counting them without humans, a stereotype that did not change until the 1950s when they were thought to be the ancestors of modern Europeans, but were carried over to a side branch of the human family tree. Speaking after research in the 1980s, a decision supported by comparisons of mitochondrial DNA to modern humans and Neanderthals in the 1990s and 2000s.

Fossils can be defined as ancient organisms or traces preserved in rocks, and a fossil can include an entire living organism, or part of it; Bones, shells, feathers, and leaves can turn into fossils, and fossils can be very large, up to several meters in length, and weigh several tons, such as fossilized tree fossils or dinosaur bones, or very small, they can only be seen with a microscope ; Like fossils of bacteria, and pollen.

The preserved remains turn into fossils if they are about ten thousand years old, and among the oldest fossils are those that belong to ancient algae that lived in the oceans more than 3 billion years ago, and fossils are usually found deep in the earth.

-About the discoveries of human fossils

The roots of the intertwined human family tree go back to Africa more than 4 million years ago, to a group of ancient major species such as: the land monkey (Ardipithecus) and the Sahelanthropus, and it took 3 million years before our species arrived, It is an evolutionary epic based on Australopithecus afarensis; Or the southern acorn ( Australopithecus Afarensis ).

A number of scientists have discovered fossils called "Lucy", which are fossils of early humans, which had larger brains than previous major species, had the ability to walk on two legs, and had strong jaws that allowed them to eat a variety of foods, and they were These features may have been useful 3.5 million years ago, during the existence of Australopithecus afarensis, when natural changes in the climate were making East Africa colder and drier, reducing the forests that our early ancestors called (home), but over time these features evolved The group and its successors to take advantage of more open and diverse environments.

Southern apes (A. afarensis) weren't the only ones with these traits. In 1995, scientists described Australopithecus anamensis. This species also shared the main features of Lucy's group, but it has remained out of sight, and its only known remains consist of From teeth and fragments in the jaw.

The first ever found skull was found for southern anaemic apes, a pivotal group of early human ancestors who lived 1.5 to 4 million years ago, and the skull was one of the first important organs to be discovered.

-Oldest human fossils

The oldest known fossils of modern humans or Homo sapiens belong to the skulls of two adults and a child that were discovered in the Afar region in eastern Ethiopia and are 160,000 years old. They were found in a pit near a village called Hertu. Paleontologists say that this discovery adds details to a crucial period in human evolution, and confirms The hypothesis that modern humans evolved in Africa.

The discovery of human fossils can fill many important gaps in the study of human evolution, as the fossils of ancient hominins (or human ancestors) are extremely rare, and are often just parts of bones, but the discovered skull is mostly complete, which should reveal Many details about how our early ancestors lived and evolved.