Chapter%2032-3:%20Primates%20

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Chapter 32-3 Primates Human Origins

• Essential Questions
• What characteristics are shared by all primates?
• What are the major evolutionary groups of
  primates?
• What is a hominid?
• What does the fossil record show about hominids?

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• What is a primate?
• Fingers, toes shoulders
• 5 flexible fingers, flexible toes, shoulders
  allow arms to rotate
• Most have opposable thumbs

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• Well-developed cerebrum
• Allows complex behavior social behaviors,
  adoption, warfare

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• Binocular vision, flat face
• Able to merge images from 2 eyes
• Depth perception
• 3D view

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• Evolution of primates
• Prosimians earliest branch
• Lemurs, lorises

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• Anthropoids humans, apes, most monkeys
• 2 branches caused by separation of continents
• New world monkeys (Central/South America)
  adapted for trees have prehensile tail
• Old world monkeys (Africa/Asia) baboons,
  orangutans, gorillas, chimps, humans

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• What is a hominid?
• About 6 m.y.a. hominid line gave rise to humans
• Bipedal 2 feet locomotion skeleton changed
  for this
• Early hominids
• Australopithecus Lucy fossil probably
  ancestral to humans
• How do the branches connect?
• No simple, straight-line transformation from
  early hominids to modern humans

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• Out of Africa but who and when?
• Modern Homo sapiens
• Homo neanderthalensis Europe N. Asia 200-300
  thousand years ago
• Stone tools, organized groups

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• Homo sapiens appear in middle east about 100
  thousand years ago
• cave paintings, burial rituals
• Only hominid species left on earth