Hominidae and Hominin: A Comparative Evolutionary Study

Evolution Assessment: Part A

Q1: Hominidae is a family, which included great apes and humans. All members are mostly larger compared to earlier primate species. Their key features included long arms, short legs, no tail, five fingers and five toes, opposable thumbs and big toes. They mostly lived on the ground and could stand up on two legs. The difference between Hominins and Honindae group is that Hominids consists of extinct Great Apes, including modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and their ancestors. Hominin however, consisted of modern humans, extinct species of human and immediate ancestors including those members of genus Homo.

Q2: As of now, the earliest human like species to have existed was Homo habilis. It was one of the earliest of Homo genus. “Refer Figure 1” Key features include its brain which was 50% the size of modern humans yet it had larger braincase than earlier Hominin species. It features leg and foot bones, which indicated that it walked on two legs. It was also smaller than humans as Habilis stood no taller than 1.3m high. Habilis were also thought the first to use primitive stone tools mainly for hunting of prey and scrapping for new tools. Homo Sapiens differ from Habilis as they have

“ Refer to Figure 2”, the skull from furthest right has a relativity small brain capacity and sloped face. However as years of evolution occur it is seen that the skulls progressively get bigger, and brain capacity increases. Besides similarities in anatomy, our close biological bond with many of the primate species is indicated by DNA evidence. It confirms that our closest biological relatives were chimpanzees, whom share many DNA traits. DNA also shows species and chimpanzees had split from a common ancestor species that lived around 8 million years ago. Our last common ancestral monkeys and apes appeared to live 25 million years