AUSTRALOPITICUS

AND HOMO HABILIS

Featuring the HUMAN EVOLUTION
Repoted by Group 1
AUSTRALOPITHECUS
THE FIRST DEFINITE HOMINID

Australopithecus was originally defined by Raymond Dart in

1925 on the basis of a small child’s skull from Taung, South
Africa, that was 2-3 million years old. This fossil had an ape-
sized brain but a short face with smaller front teeth, including a
small, human-like canine tooth much smaller than the projecting
ones of apes, and larger back teeth (molars) than those of apes.
Perhaps most importantly, the place where the spinal cord exited
the skull was positioned underneath it, showing that these
creatures stood fully upright with their head positioned over their
vertebral column. Dart named this fossil species
Australopithecus africanus (Dart 1925).
 Dartdescribed Australopithecus as “intermediate between living
anthropoids and man” (1925: 574), but no formal definition of the genus
was given beyond that. Nearly a century later, we understand australopiths
to be intermediate in time and in anatomy between earlier hominins
(Ardipithecus, Orrorin, Sahelanthropus; See Su’s article)and Homo, and the
genus Australopithecus is defined not only by similarities among its species,
but also by differences from the groups which pre- and post-date it. Strictly
speaking, Australopithecus is probably not a true genus, because some
species may be more closely related to humans than others, and
anthropologists are not certain about the precise relationships among them.
 Australopiths were terrestrial bipedal ape-like animals that had large
chewing teeth with thick enamel caps, but whose brains were only very
slightly larger than those of great apes. They are the closest known relatives
of our genus Homo, and we most likely evolved from a species that was
part of this adaptive radiation. hominin species that span the time period
from 4.18 to about 2 million years ago.
 WHAT IS
AUSTRALOPITHECUS ?
 AUSTRALOPITHECUS
BODY FEATURES
 Australopiths were fully upright bipeds whose skeletons display evidence
of a history of selection for travelling bipedally on the ground, and that had
lost features seen in most primates that would have made them good tree-
climbers, such as a grasping foot.
 evidence for upright posture include an upright position of the skull and a
spine with curvatures allowing vertical posture, a short, broad pelvis
providing effective leverage for propulsion and balance over the two lower
limbs, a femoral carrying angle and a tibia oriented orthogonally to the
ankle joint, which together position the feet directly under the knees as in
humans today, and stiff feet with longitudinal and transverse arches that
lacked opposable big toes. There are also footprints of Australopithecus at
Laetoli, Tanzania, 3.66 Ma that clearly indicate bipedal locomotion.
 Australopiths were roughly 1.2-1.5 m tall and probably weighed about 30-
50 kg Males were almost twice the size of females, a level of difference, or
sexual dimorphism, greater than modern chimpanzees or humans but less
than gorillas or orangutans .Their cranial capacity was 420-550 cc3, making
their brains slightly larger for their body size than are those of modern apes.
 Australopithecus species lack canine tooth size sexual dimorphism, and
have canines much reduced in size compared with extant apes, only very
slightly larger than those of females. This indicates that males were not
using their teeth to bite each other during fighting for access to mates.
However, because males were so much larger than females, they still
probably competed heavily for access to females, which possibly signifies a
novel means of male-male competition in these hominins. Australopith
front teeth are smaller than those of extant apes, but the premolars and
molars are expanded and thickly enameled
 The jaws are robust, as is cranial evidence of the chewing apparatus,
namely large cheekbones and generally well developed crests for
attachment of neck and chewing muscles. The upper face is fairly vertical,
but the lower face projects forward more than in humans (Figure 3). The
face and dental anatomy suggests that australopiths were adapted to eating
tough, hard-to-process foods such as tubers, nuts, seeds or roots, at least
during times of food scarcity. Studies of isotopes within teeth, microscopic
enamel wear, and of plant particles recovered from dental plaque all seem to
confirm a tough diet
 AUSTRALOPITHECUS
ARTIFACTS FOUND…
 Rareartifacts attributed to australopiths suggest that there is more to their
behavior than what anatomical clues indicate. For quite some time
paleoanthropologists have known about bone digging and probing tools
from australopith sites in South Africa, but it is now apparent that at least
some australopiths also made and used stone tools. Cutmarks have been
found on animal bones at the 3.4 Ma site of Dikika, Ethiopia, which is a site
where A. afarensis is known .Furthermore, a novel stone tool industry
predating even the Oldowan has been discovered at Lomekwi, Kenya, a site
dated to 3.3 Ma .The makers of these tools remains unknown.
Kenyanthropus platyops is known from other localities at Lomekwi, as are
a number of fossils not attributed to any taxon. No hominins are definitively
associated with thee tools, but the Lomekwian archeology demonstrate that
australopiths were making and using stone tools in the mid-Pliocene, and
probably consuming meat when available.
 The Taung skull was the first evidence showing that walking upright on two
feet and a different diet (as inferred from the teeth) were the adaptations
that initially set hominins apart from apes, and that these changes long
preceded great expansion of the brain and the many complex behaviors
that accompany it. Since the discovery of the Taung specimen, many
hundreds of specimens from roughly eight species of Australopithecus
have been discovered in South Africa (A. africanus, A. sediba), eastern
Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania; A. anamensis, A. afarensis, A.
deyiremeda, Kenyanthropus platyops) and central Africa (Chad; A.
bahrelghazali). The oldest and most primitive australopiths are found in
eastern Africa, particularly Ethiopia and Kenya, with more derived
australopiths appearing later in South Africa.
 South African sites yield some very well-preserved fossils and associated
skeletons, but the complexities of the formation of the cave assemblages
in which they are found can lead to uncertainty in dating. However, it
appears that Australopithecus spans more than 2 million years of time and
occupied a variety of habitats.
HOMO
HABILIS
One of the earliest members of the
genus homo
 one
HOMO HABILIS
of the earliest members of the genus Homo, has a slightly larger braincase and
smaller face and teeth than in Australopithecus or older hominin species. But it
still retains some ape-like features, including long arms and a moderately-
prognathic face. Its name, which means ‘handy man’, was given in 1964 because
this species was thought to represent the first maker of stone tools. Currently, the
oldest stone tools are dated slightly older than the oldest evidence of the genus
Homo.
 Itwas discovered in 1960. The history of discovery was led by scientists Louis
and Mary Leakey uncovered the fossilized remains of a unique early human
between 1960 and 1963 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The type speciman, OH 7,
was found by Jonathan Leakey, so was nicknamed "Jonny's child". Because this
early human had a combination of features different from those seen in
Australopithecus, Louis Leakey, South African scientist Philip Tobias, and British
scientist John Napier declared these fossils a new species, and called them Homo
habilis (meaning 'handy man'), because they suspected that it was this slightly
larger-brained early human that made the thousands of stone tools also found at
Olduvai Gorge.
 Homo habilis height average is at 3ft – 4ft 5 in cm its 100-135. And its average
weigth is at 70 lbs or 32 kg.
 Early Homo had smaller teeth than Australopithecus, but their tooth enamel was
still thick and their jaws were still strong, indicating their teeth were still adapted
chewing some hard foods (possibly only seasonally when their preferred foods
became less available). Dental microwear studies suggest that the diet of H.
habilis was flexible and versatile and that they were capable of eating a broad
range of foods, including some tougher foods like leaves, woody plants, and some
animal tissues, but that they did not routinely consume or specialize in eating
hard foods like brittle nuts or seeds, dried meat, or very hard tubers.
 Another line of evidence for the diet of H. habilis comes from some of the
earliest cut- and percussion-marked bones, found back to 2.6 million years ago.
Scientists usually associate these traces of butchery of large animals, direct
evidence of meat and marrow eating, with the earliest appearance of the genus
Homo, including H. habilis.
 Many scientists think early Homo, including H. habilis, made and used the first
stone tools found in the archaeological record—these also date back to about 2.6
million years ago; however, this hypothesis is difficult to test because several
other species of early human lived at the same time, and in the same geographic
area, as where traces of the earliest tool use have been found.
EXAMPLES OF HOMO’S SKULLS
KNM-ER 1813
AGE: ABOUT 1.9 MILLION YEARS OLD
SPECIES: HOMO HABILIS
OH 24
AGE: ABOUT 1.8 MILLION YEARS
OLDSPECIES: HOMO HABILIS
OH 8
AGE: ABOUT 1.8 MILLION YEARS
OLDSPECIES: HOMO HABILIS
THANK YOU !!!
 REFERENCES
• https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/austr
alopithecus-and-kin-145077614/
• http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-
fossils/species/homo-habilis