HOMO HABILIS (3 – 4 ft) 700 CC

Homo habilis is an archaic species of Stone

Age human which lived between roughly 2.1 and 1.5
million years ago (mya), during the Early
Pleistocene. The species was first discovered by
anthropologists Mary and Louis Leakey at Olduvai
Gorge, Tanzania in 1955, associated with
the Oldowan stone tool industry.
 HOMO ERECTUS
Homo erectus, (Latin: “upright man”) extinct species of the human genus
(Homo), perhaps an ancestor of modern humans (Homo sapiens). H. erectus most
likely originated in Africa, though Eurasia cannot be ruled out. Regardless of where it
first evolved, the species seems to have dispersed quickly, starting about 1.9 million
years ago (mya) near the middle of the Pleistocene Epoch, moving through the African
tropics, Europe, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. This history has been recorded
directly if imprecisely by many sites that have yielded fossil remains of H. erectus. At
other localities, broken animal bones and stone tools have indicated the presence of the
species, though there are no traces of the people themselves. H. erectus was a human
of medium stature that walked upright. The braincase was low, the forehead was
receded, and the nose, jaws, and palate were wide. The brain was smaller and
the teeth larger than in modern humans. H. erectus appears to have been the first
human species to control fire, some 1,000,000 years ago. The species seems to have
flourished until some 200,000 years ago (200 kya) or perhaps later before giving way to
other humans including Homo sapiens.
 HOMO NEANDERTHALENSIS
Neanderthals (the ‘th’ pronounced as ‘t’) are our closest extinct human
relative. Some defining features of their skulls include the large middle part of the
face, angled cheek bones, and a huge nose for humidifying and warming cold, dry air.
Their bodies were shorter and stockier than ours, another adaptation to living in
cold environments. But their brains were just as large as ours and often larger -
proportional to their brawnier bodies.
Neanderthals made and used a diverse set of sophisticated tools, controlled
fire, lived in shelters, made and wore clothing, were skilled hunters of large animals
and also ate plant foods, and occasionally made symbolic or ornamental objects.
There is evidence that Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead and occasionally
even marked their graves with offerings, such as flowers. No other primates, and no
earlier human species, had ever practiced this sophisticated and symbolic behavior.
DNA has been recovered from more than a dozen Neanderthal fossils, all from
Europe; the Neanderthal Genome Project is one of the exciting new areas of human
origins research.

Year of Discovery: 1829
History of Discovery: 
Neanderthal 1 was the first specimen to be recognized as an early
human fossil. When it was discovered in 1856 in Germany, scientists had never seen
a specimen like it: the oval shaped skull with a low, receding forehead and distinct
browridges, the thick, strong bones. In 1864, it became the first
fossil hominin species to be named. Geologist William King suggested the
name Homo neanderthalensis  (Johanson and Edgar, 2006), after these fossils found
in the Feldhofer Cave of the Neander Valley in Germany (tal—a modern form of thal—
means “valley” in German). Several years after Neanderthal 1 was discovered,
scientists realized that prior fossil discoveries—in 1829 at Engis, Belgium, and in
1848 at Forbes Quarry, Gibraltar—were also Neanderthals. Even though they weren’t
recognized at the time, these two earlier discoveries were actually the first early
human fossils ever found.
 
Height: Males: average 5 ft 5 in (164 cm); Females: average 5 ft 1 in (155 cm)
Weight: Males: average 143 lbs (65 kg); Females: average 119 lbs (54 kg)

HOMO SAPIENS
Homo sapiens is the only extant human species. The name is Latin
for 'wise man' and was introduced in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus (who is himself
the lectotype for the species).
Extinct species of the genus Homo include Homo erectus, extant
from roughly 1.9 to 0.4 million years ago, and a number of other species
(by some authors considered subspecies of either H. sapiens or H.
erectus). The divergence of the lineage leading to H. sapiens out of
ancestral H. erectus (or an intermediate species such as Homo antecessor)
is estimated to have occurred in Africa roughly 500,000 years ago. The
earliest fossil evidence of early Homo sapiens appears in Africa around
300,000 years ago, with the earliest genetic splits among modern people,
according to some evidence, dating to around the same time.[2][3][note 1]
[6]
 Sustained archaic admixture is known to have taken place both in Africa
and (following the recent Out-Of-Africa expansion) in Eurasia, between
about 100,000 and 30,000 years ago.