The evolutionary context of the first hominins

Bernard Wood () and Terry Harrison
Additional contact information
Bernard Wood: CASHP, The George Washington University, 2110 G Street, NW Washington, District of Columbia 20052, USA
Terry Harrison: Center for the Study of Human Origins, New York University, 25 Waverly Place, New York, New York 10003, USA

Nature, 2011, vol. 470, issue 7334, 347-352

Abstract: Drawing the line on human ancestors Several fossil discoveries in recent years have been hailed as early hominins — members of the clade that includes humans and human ancestors — including Ardipithecus, from the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia, Orrorin from the Tugen Hills of Kenya and Sahelanthropus from the Djurab desert of Chad. Bernard Wood and Terry Harrison sound a note of caution. The differences between modern humans and non-hominins such as chimpanzees and bonobos are considerable. But between 8 million and 4 million years ago, when the human line is thought to have emerged, the differences between hominids in general would have been smaller. In this Review, Wood and Harrison offer alternative interpretations for where the likes of Ardipithecus, Orrorin and Sahelanthropus might be accommodated within the tree of life — close to but not perhaps on the hominin line.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09709 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:470:y:2011:i:7334:d:10.1038_nature09709

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature09709

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().