The 530-million-year evolutionary path to human existence

 

The astonishing science of 'evolution' and the beautiful evolution of 'science'..

          

Gary Meaney

 

Animal lover and carnivore zoologist.

The following is a sequence of transitional fossils - real, discovered species - which link humans not only to apes but to the very first chordates themselves with astonishing smoothness. Before the first chordates, our ancestors lacked hard body-parts, and so only fossilized in the most exceptional of circumstances.

Pikaia

Haikouicthys

Arandaspis

Birkenia

Guiyu

Osteolepis

Eusthenopteron

Pandericthys

Tiktaalik

Elginerpeton

Ventastega

Acanthostega

Icthyostega

Hynerpeton

Tulerpeton

Pederpes

Proterogyrinus

Hylonomus

Haptodus

Biarmosuchus

Cynognathus

Thrinaxodon

Morganucodon

Spinolestes

Juramaia

Purgatorius

Notharctus

Darwinius

Apidium

Aegyptopithecus

Proconsul

Pierolapithecus

Ardipithecus

Australopithecus

Homo habilis

Homo erectus

Homo rhodesiensis

and finally, early Homo sapiens

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There have been many human species over the last 2 million years.

By:   

Barry McGuinness

 

        B.Sc., M.Sc.

The first, Homo habilis, evolved and lived in East Africa.

Homo habilis gradually diverged into a second species, Homo erectus.

Homo erectus and its cousin Homo heidelbergensis spread beyond Africa, starting about 1.8 million years ago:

By 1.6 million years ago, they had migrated as far as Java, Indonesia. Then, a number of new human species evolved from these non-African populations.

Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) evolved and lived in Europe and West Asia:

Denisovans appear to have evolved in Central Asia and went on to settle much of South-East Asia.

But our own modern human species, Homo sapiens, originated back in Africa some 300,000 years ago.

The main wave of Homo sapiens migrations from Africa began around 70,000 years ago.

Every person alive today can trace their ancestry to Africa, albeit with some traces (<5%) of other recent species (Neanderthals and Denisovans) thanks to occasional interbreeding over thousands of years.

Africa really is the ancient trunk of our evolutionary tree. And as you can see, there has been a lot more genetic differentiation between populations in different parts of Africa than in the rest of the world put together.