Lecture 4 Flashcards
Humans are members of the order primates along with what other animals?
Apes, monkeys and prosimians.
What is arboreal?
Adapted to life in the trees.
Where are loris’s and tarsiers from?
Southeast asia.
What are examples of primates?
Japanese macaques, rhesus monkeys and spider monkeys, howler monkey, chimpanzee, baboon, gorilla.
What are the characteristics of primate traits?
Forward facing eyes, opposable thumbs, rotating ulna and radius, reduction in olfactory senses, hands and feet with 5 digits, less reliance on sense of smell, expansion and complexity of the brain.
What is generalized dentition?
Teeth aren’t overly specialized for processing only one type of food.
What is stereoscopic vision?
Where images are imposed on each other (gives us depth perception)
What does diurnal mean?
Active during the day. Animals who are diurnal usually see in colour.
What is phylogeny?
The term referring to the evolutionary history of a species.
When did the earliest primates appear?
Appear about 65 million years ago.
Who is the earliest primate?
Purgatorius.
What is the arboreal theory?
Explanation of primate origin. Suggests that earliest primates evolved from animals that moved in to the trees because they were already well adapted.
What is the visual-predation theory?
Focuses on the idea that primates were insect eaters. The fingers, climbing etc would make them ideal to move in to the trees.
What is aegyptopithecus? (anthropoid)
A slow moving, arboreal quadruped dated 36-24 mya.
Many species of early anthropoids were discovered where?
The fayum, southwest of Cairo, Egypt.
When was the “golden age of the hominoids”?
23 - 5 mya. (miocene). Thousands of hominoid fossils from sites in Africa, Asia and Europe. Bipedal hominids appear at the end of the miocene.
What is a hominid?
The text defines a hominid as any creature believed to be in the direct human line. Bipedalism is a defining characteristic of hominids.
READ
Textbook pages 86-88 - Upright provider, upright scavenger, efficient walker, endurance runner.
What are the advantages of bipedalism?
Ability to see great distances, ability to provide food to others, more effective scavenging, greater locomotive energy efficiency, greater endurance.
What is the location of the earliest hominid sites?
Africa. Specifically more east Africa.
TEXTBOOK
Hominid species glossary.
What are the three earliest hominids?
- Sahelanthropus tchadensis - 7mya
- Orrorin Tugenesis - 5.6 - 6 mya
- Ardipithecus Radius - 4.4 mya
When did the australopithecines first appear?
4.2 mya
What is sexual dimorphism?
Refers to the differences between males and females physical characteristics in a species.
