What is australopithecus?

Question

social science

Answer 1

Bipedal hominid

Answer 2

It was a bipedal hominid.  

Answer 3

It's a noun.

Haha, no, um:

a fossil bipedal primate with both apelike and human characteristics, found in Pliocene and lower Pleistocene deposits ( c. 4 million to 1 million years old) in Africa. • Genus Australopithecus, family Hominidae: several species, including the lightly built A. africanus, which is thought to be the immediate ancestor of the human genus Homo. The more heavily built forms (often placed in the genus Paranthropus), such as A. robustus and A. (or Zinjanthropus) boisei, were probably evolutionary dead ends.

Answer 4

Gracile australopithecines shared several traits with modern apes and humans, and were widespread throughout Eastern and Northern Africa by a time between 3.0 and 3.9 million years ago. The earliest evidence of fundamentally bipedal hominids can be observed at the site of Laetoli in Tanzania. These hominid footprints are remarkably similar to modern humans and have been dated as 3.7 million years old. Until recently, the footprints have generally been classified as australopithecine because that had been the only form of pre-human known to have existed in that region at that time; however, some scholars have considered reassigning them to a yet unidentified very early species of the genus Homo[citation needed].

Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus are among the most famous of the extinct hominids. A. africanus used to be regarded as ancestral to the genus Homo (in particular Homo erectus). However, fossils assigned to the genus Homo have been found that are older than A. africanus. Thus, the genus Homo either split off from the genus Australopithecus at an earlier date (the latest common ancestor being A. afarensis or an even earlier form, possibly Kenyanthropus platyops), or both developed from a yet possibly unknown common ancestor independently.

According to the Chimpanzee Genome Project, both human (Ardipithecus, Australopithecus and Homo) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus) lineages diverged from a common ancestor about 5 to 6 million years ago, if we assume a constant rate of evolution. It is theoretically more likely for evolution to happen slower, as opposed to quicker, from the date suggested by a gene clock (the result of which is given as an "youngest common ancestor", i.e., the latest possible date of diversion.) However, hominids discovered more recently are somewhat older than the molecular clock would theorize. Sahelanthropus tchadensis, commonly called "Toumai" is about 7 million years old and Orrorin tugenensis lived at least 6 million years ago. Since little is known of them, they remain controversial among scientists since the molecular clock in humans has determined that humans and chimpanzees had an evolutionary split at least a million years later. One theory suggests that humans and chimpanzees diverged once, then interbred around one million years after diverging.

Answer 5

It is a Gigantic Bird that was in its prime during the 1500s, sometimes persons of that time would use them as commercial transportation [where we use the airplanes now] much like a carrier pigeon for people.

it has been determined as "fake" in the scientific, political, medical, geologic, and anthropological world but lives on in yours if you want.

"they are a revolution in transportation" - George Washington