I'm teaching a unit on human evolution. what new theories are out there since Lucy?

Question

I'm going to talk about lucy but that was like 20 yrs ago....what are the new theories of human evolution and new speciments found? what are the oldest hominid fossils now? is it the lucy child? any websites or online articles would be nice. th anks

Answer 1

Uh, Lucy wasn't a theory, but a find -- an unusually complete skeleton.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/bein...

Some fo the links are to free articles, others are for subscribers only.

Answer 2

Check out the Discovery Channel special "The Real Eve."  Has nothing to do with religion, everything to do with human ancestry.  Available on DVD from Amazon.  Fascinating.

Answer 3

There is a strong likelihood, that among the several hominin species that were alive, within the past 2 million years, several of them cross-bred, resulting in the homogenized mix, that we know of today, as Homo sapiens!

This would include...Homo hablis, ergaster, erectus, neanderthalensis, floresiensis, etc...

The reason that we are so gentically similar now, is due to the Mt. Toba volcanic explosion of 74,000 BP. The severe conditions which followed that event, pruned the entire hominin population down to roughly 2-10,000 worldwide, and from that, all living people of today emerged!

Since there were several migrations "out of Africa", prior to 74,000 BP, and because some of the scattered DNA of these early migrations apparently survived, this would be one reason that the "out of Africa" theory is partially true, however the regional develoment theory is also partially true as well, for the same reason, and because of this near-extinction event...

Answer 4

Recent discoveries include a bipedal hominid dated at 7 to 8 millions years ago... therefore some suspect the common ancestor to chimps & homo lines was bipedal. I'll get back with some links that might help you flesh this out a bit.

http://www.americanscientist.org/templat...

http://www.stanford.edu/~harryg/protecte...

Still looking for where I put the early date for bipedalism, but this should give you a good start.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/spe...