1. Chapter 32-3: Primates & Human Origins
Essential Questions:
What characteristics are shared by all primates?
What are the major evolutionary groups of primates?
What is a hominid?
What does the fossil record show about hominids?

2. What is a primate? Fingers, toes & shoulders
5 flexible fingers, flexible toes, shoulders allow arms to rotate
Most have opposable thumbs

3. Well-developed cerebrum
Allows complex behavior – social behaviors, adoption, warfare

4. Binocular vision, flat face
Able to merge images from 2 eyes
Depth perception
3D view

5. Evolution of primates
Prosimians – earliest branch
Lemurs, lorises

6. Anthropoids – humans, apes, most monkeys
2 branches caused by separation of continents
New world monkeys (Central/South America) – adapted for trees; have prehensile tail
Old world monkeys (Africa/Asia) – baboons, orangutans, gorillas, chimps, humans

7. What is a hominid? About 6 m.y.a.: hominid line gave rise to humans
Bipedal – 2 feet locomotion – skeleton changed for this
Early hominids
Australopithecus – “Lucy” fossil; probably ancestral to humans
How do the branches connect?
No simple, straight-line transformation from early hominids to modern humans

8. Out of Africa – but who and when? Modern Homo sapiens
Homo neanderthalensis – Europe & N. Asia; thousand years ago
Stone tools, organized groups

9. Homo sapiens – appear in middle east about 100 thousand years ago
cave paintings, burial rituals
Only hominid species left on earth