Sentences with phrase «phacochoerus africanus»

At the time, Falk argued that four endocasts from southern African hominids — three Australopithecus africanus and one Australopithecus sediba — showed folding patterns that suggested that brain reorganization was underway as early as 3 million years ago in a frontal area involved in human speech production.

He called the skull Australopithecus africanus and argued that it showed we evolved in Africa.

When paleoanthropologist Lee Berger unearthed a fossil near Johannesburg, South Africa, it seemed to be a jumble of parts: a braincase similar in size to that of an Australopithecus africanus, a Homo erectus pelvis, and the arms of a Miocene ape.

In this inherited malady, the brain is typically just 400 cc — roughly the same size as that of the early hominid Australopithecus africanus, of which «Lucy» is the best - known specimen.

An international team of researchers from North American, African and European institutes and museums have now discovered the origin of this muscle sling: in Eunotosaurus africanus, a fossil reptile which lived in South Africa during the Middle Permian around 260 million years ago, as the study just published in Nature Communications reveals.

The skeleton of the South African reptile Eunotosaurus africanus fills a gap in the early evolution of turtles and their enigmatic shell.

It's possible A. africanus were using other types of tools, like bones or pieces of wood.

By studying the anatomy and thin sections (also known as histology), Lyson and his colleagues have shown that the modern tortoise breathing apparatus was already in place in the earliest fossil tortoise, an animal known as Eunotosaurus africanus.

Finally, they looked at metacarpals from four Australopithecus africanus individuals, up to 3 million years old.

Satiated white - backed vultures, Gyps africanus, stand around a warthog carcass after much of the meat has been removed from the abdomen.

Two warthogs, Phacochoerus africanus, are pushed by a helicopter toward a transport truck through a huge fabric funnel, as workers close curtains behind them so they can't escape.

One display case contains the casts of an array of hominid skulls: the robust, massive - jawed 1.6 - million - year - old Paranthropus robustus from Swartkrans, South Africa; the flat - faced 1.7 - million - year - old Paranthropus boisei from East Turkana, Kenya; the tiny skull and fossilized brain of the 2.5 - million - year - old Taung child, or Australopithecus africanus, found at Sterkfontein, South Africa.

Most experts agree that our genus evolved from a species of Australopithecus — either A. afarensis (Lucy's species) or A. africanus.

They detected these same modifications in a skeleton of A. africanus, another australopithecine that roamed South Africa between 2 million and 3 million years ago.

Features such as small brain size, slight build and very long arms link the creature to the australopithecines, especially A. africanus.

In a paper describing the fossil remains in the April 9 Science, Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and his colleagues suggest that A. africanus gave rise to A. sediba, which in turn gave rise to Homo.

Two South African hominids from between roughly 1 million and 3 million years ago, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, show lower rates of tooth chipping than H. naledi, at about 21 percent and 13 percent, respectively, the investigators find.

A. afarensis and A. africanus displayed pelvic arrangements for upright walking, but not for Ardi's apelike climbing power.

Clarke argues that Little Foot, which he classifies as Australopithecus prometheus, represents a more primitive, separate species from A. africanus.

Until Little Foot was found, the earliest hominin species known in South Africa was Australopithecus africanus, which is generally believed to have lived between 2 million and 3 million years ago.

The study found Karabo most likely to be ancestral to the genus Homo — but not a descendent of A. africanus.

This suggested that A. africanus was a parallel evolutionary line to our own, and that some other species gave rise to the line that eventually became human.

Many anthropologists have argued that A. africanus couldn't be our direct ancestor largely because of timing: The earliest known members of the genus Homo — though their classification remains controversial and their fossils fragmentary — turn up in East Africa soon after A. africanus appears in South Africa.

A. africanus is closely related to Lucy and her kin (Australopithecus afarensis), the gracile hominids found in the East African Rift Valley at Hadar, at Laetoli in Tanzania and elsewhere.

When Whitcome's team compared the spines of one male and one female Australopithecus africanus, an early bipedal hominid that lived roughly 2 million years ago, it found differences in the number of wedged vertebrae.

Twenty million years older than the oldest known fossil of a direct turtle ancestor, Eunotosaurus africanus has broadened ribs inside its body and elongated vertebrae in its spine compared with other reptiles, but those bones aren't fully fused to form an external shell as is the case in modern turtles.

In this habitat lived a lightly built or «gracile» australopithecine called Australo - pithecus africanus.

They stop short of saying that A. africanus was using and making stone tools and acknowledge that these grips could have been used for a number of different activities with tools.

Future studies will be needed to see if this pattern is found just in A. africanus or in other members of Australopithecus as well, says paleoanthropologist Brian Richmond of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

This suggests that A. africanus was using a «human - like» precision grip «much earlier and more frequently than previously considered,» the authors write.

When the team scanned hand bones from four members of A. africanus that lived in South Africa between 2 million and 3 million years ago, they found that the pattern of the trabecular bone was asymmetrical, as in modern humans and Neandertals that use tools frequently (as they also show in their study).

Both hominids were about 1.2 metres tall and lightly built, with ape - sized brains and bodies resembling A. africanus, which is thought to have been a direct ancestor of humans.

The research, titled «Human - like hand use in Australopithecus africanus, shows that Australopithecus africanus,» a 3 - 2 million - year - old species from South Africa traditionally considered not to have engaged in habitual tool manufacture, has a human - like trabecular bone pattern in the bones of the thumb and palm (the metacarpals) consistent with forceful opposition of the thumb and fingers typically adopted during tool use.

In this study, we use microtomography to undertake the first comprehensive study of maxillary and mandibular premolar root and canal variation in Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus (n = 166 teeth) within and between the species.

Here we show that Australopithecus africanus (~ 3 to 2 million years ago) and several Pleistocene hominins, traditionally considered not to have engaged in habitual tool manufacture, have a human - like trabecular bone pattern in the metacarpals consistent with forceful opposition of the thumb and fingers typically adopted during tool use.

New research suggests pre-Homo human ancestral species, such as Australopithecus africanus, used human - like hand postures much earlier than was previously thought.

By studying the hand bones of the Australopithecus africanus, researchers found that these ape - like human ancestors had human - like hands capable of using stone tools.

A. africanus has long puzzled scientists because of its massive jaws and teeth, but they now believe the species» skull design was optimal for cracking nuts and seeds.

The Copeland team analyzed the teeth of 19 hominins: eleven Paranthropus robustus individuals from Swartkrans, fating to 1.8 million years ago and eight Australopithecus africanus individuals, 2.2 ma from nearby Sterkfontein.

Aedes africanus, Aedes furcifer and Aedes luteocephalus species were the most infected vectors with 16 % positive (5/31 strains) each.

africanus, which lived until about 2.1 million years ago.

That's why the bone (in A. africanus) has remodeled in response to that more human - like hand use.»

The researchers found that Australopithecus africanus had human - like hands that were capable of precision grips, such as squeezing small objects.

Meet «Mrs. Ples,» the popular nickname for the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus, unearthed in Sterkfontein, South Africa in 1947.

An example of a human precision grip, grasping an Australopithecus africanus thumb bone dating to 3.2 million years ago.

For example, he wonders if all australopiths had human - like hands, or if it was just A. africanus.

These observations support studies of the postcranial fossil record which have concluded that H. erectus was an obligatory biped, whereas A. africanus showed a locomotor repertoire comprising facultative bipedalism as well as arboreal climbing.

This skull has far too many australopithecine features to be anything else than a large - brained africanus.

The large degree of variation in africanus shows that the degree of difference between rudolfensis and earlier africanus is such that attribution to differing species is not required.

The angle of two habiline specimens is exactly the same as that of africanus and boisei.