Human Origins

This course will cover the evolutionary history from the very first primates up until the earliest occurrences of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The course will 1) examine modern human and non-human primate anatomy and adaptations, with an eye to the types of data that can be reconstructed from fossils; 2) cover the evolution of the primates from the earliest representatives of the order to the ancestors of modern groups; 3) focus on what the fossil record actually tells us about the evolution of our most recent ancestors and close cousins. This perspective will be enhanced by laboratories based around human and non-human primate skeletal material, fossil casts, and virtual data.

The lecture drives the student through the several stages of non-human and human primate evolution. The course will start with background knowledge on relevant skeletal anatomy, non-human primate taxonomy, hominin classification, and an introduction to the temporal and environmental context for non-human and human primate evolution. For the first half of the course, we will go through the many stages of primate evolution, becoming familiar with the great diversity of fossil primate groups, starting with plesiadapiforms in the Paleocene and ending with the great apes of the Miocene. For the second half of the course, we will focus specifically on hominin evolution, starting with the potential earliest hominins from the Miocene, and exploring the record of hominin species until the most recent anatomically modern humans.

The course will be supplemented with laboratories. The aim of the laboratories is to guide the course participants through the diversity of fossil primates and fossil hominins. The students will learn the key traits to be able to discern between major groups of primates and hominin lineages. The approach to identification is morphological and to the extent that material is available, students will be working with skeletal material and casts or relevant human and non-human primate groups. The student will also have access to 3D reconstructions of key fossils, covering the entirety of the evolutionary history of primates and humans. A major lab activity for this course will be the ‘Mystery Fossil Project’, in which students will be presented with an unidentified fossil and some biogeographic information and will have to put their identification skills at use to figure out what it is, following a reasoned logic for identifying morphological characters learned throughout the course and labs.

The course lectures will follow the schedule below:

1. Housekeeping; Primate Taxonomy

2. Skeletal Anatomy

3. Hominin classification; Temporal and Environmental Context

4. Test (to evaluate the background concepts learnt); Plesiadapiforms

5. Fossil Prosimians

6. Primate and Euprimate Origins; Early Anthropoids

7. Fossil Monkeys

8. Primitive Catarrhines; Fossil Apes

9. Subfossil Lemurs; Patterns in Primate Evolution

10. Bipedalism and Earliest Hominins; Gracile Australopiths I

11. Gracile Australopiths II

12. Robust Australopiths; Australopith Behaviour and Evolution

13. Early Homo, Homo erectus, Homo naledi

14. Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis, Archaic Homo sapiens, Neandertals

15. Origins of Anatomically Modern Humans; Denisovans; Homo longi

Bibliography:

Alemseged Z (2023) Reappraising the palaeobiology of Australopithecus. Nature 617: 45-54.

Almécija S, Hammond AS, Thompson NE, Pugh KD, Moyà-Solà S, Alba MD (2021) Fossil apes and human evolution. Science 372: eabb4363.

Bergström A, Stringer C, Hajdinjak M, Scerri EML, Skoglund P (2021) Origins of modern human ancestry. Nature 590: 229-237.

Fleagle JG (2013) Primate Adaptation and Evolution, 3rd edition. London, UK: Academic Press.

Kimbel WH, Villmoare B (2016) From Australopithecus to Homo: the transition that wasn't. Philosophical Transactions B 371: 20150248

Larsen CS (2023) A Companion to Biological Anthropology. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 640 pp.

López-Torres S (2022) Primate evolution and the emergence of humans (Chapter 24). In: Pough FH, Bemis WE, McGuire BA, Janis CM (eds.) Vertebrate Life, 11th ed., New York, NY: Oxford University Press; pp. 557-585.

Silcox MT, Bloch JI, Boyer DM, Chester SGB, López-Torres S (2017) The evolutionary radiation of plesiadapiforms. Evolutionary Anthropology 26: 74-94.

Silcox MT, López-Torres (2017) Major questions in the study of primate origins. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 45: 113-137.

Wood BA, Patterson DB (2020) Paranthropus through the looking glass. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117: 23202-23204.

K_W06, K_W07, K_W09, K_W10, K_W11, K_W12, K_W18

K_U03, K_U04, K_U07, K_U08, K_U10

K_K01, K_K04, K_K07, K_K08

Student:

- Name the defining features of the order Primates and explain their significance.

- Define the characteristics of major primate groups.

- Describe the phylogenetic relationships of the major clades of primates.

- Describe the major evolutionary trends in hominins.

- Identify hominin species.

- Distinguish between gracile and robust australopiths.

- Understand the ecological context in which bipedalism evolved and the consequences of adopting a bipedal posture.

- Summarize the major migrations of anatomically modern humans around the globe and understand the impact of human migration to the hybridization between different Homo species.

- Understand the consequences of the increase in brain size to human development and explain the origins of speech.

Assessment methods and criteria: The student will be evaluated based on a test in class in the middle of the course, and by handing in two pieces of written work: the ‘Site Report’ (in which the student chooses a preferred fossil site), and the ‘Mystery Fossil Project’ (in which the student chooses four selected ‘mystery fossils’ and argues about their identification).