"Hominid evolution" refers to the process by which humans and their closely related ancestors, such as our early relatives like Australopithecines and Homo species, have developed and changed over time. It involves the study of how these species evolved physically, in terms of both their anatomy and genetic makeup, as well as how they adapted to their environment and developed unique characteristics that distinguish us as a species.
Full definition
So the period
of hominid evolution breaks neatly into two halves, each several million years long: the period of adaptation to upright posture (plus heavens knows what else), and the period of toolmaking and brain enlargement (plus language and planning).
In
early hominid evolution this particularly refers to the space between the lower canine and the lower first premolar.
Then, much later
in hominid evolution, another event occurred: Other neural circuits connected conceptual systems, resulting in true language and higher - order consciousness.
Hominid evolution inaugurated the exercise of these new creaturely capacities here on planet Earth, but it did not bring into being the reality to which these nascent abilities gave access.
Maybe those 20 to 30 % of people who do lucid dream are at the forefront
of hominid evolution, and they are going to be the next species of preference.
While the study of extinct species can yield many fascinating details about the complexities of
hominid evolution, it doesn't tell us about our own species» genealogy — only the clues in our genes can do this.
Our knowledge of
hominid evolution — that is, when and how humans evolved away from the great ape family tree — has significantly increased in recent years, aided by unearthed fossils from Ethiopia, including the C. abyssinicus, a species of great ape.
This 3.2 - million - year - old Australopithecus afarensis,
hominid evolution's best - known fossil individual, strong - armed her way up trees, a new study finds.
First, it was found in Chad, 1,500 miles from the East African Rift Valley, long the presumed center of
hominid evolution.
That puts N. nakayamai in the right geographic place, along a trajectory of
hominid evolution that stretches for several hundred miles in eastern Africa.
This lend support to the view that the general primate metabolic machinery has been conserved throughout the course of hominoid and
hominid evolution.
There is a trajectory found in the development of altruistic and cooperative social behaviors over the course of
hominid evolution.
37 Kaye E. Reed, «Early
hominid evolution and ecological change throughout the African Plio - Pleistocene.»