...Learning about primates is important to gain information on when studying anthropology. Primates share many characteristics of those of the placental mammals, such as giving live, having different shapes and sizes of teeth, being able to maintain a consistent internal body temperature, having an increased brain size, and being able to learn new things quickly. Mammals are more specialized compared with primates and they can not be defined just by a few traits. The limbs and locomotion primates have are much different than humans. They tend to have an erect posture, flexible or generalized limb structure, prehensile hands, which all play a role in the environment they live in. Primates also have a unique diet as well as teeth structure. They...
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...Deon Smalls Professor Rigby Anthropology 115 August 12, 2015 Primate Project Throughout the history of primate evolution, primatologist observed that primates was always use to an arboreal adaptation. Which is a physical trait that enables them to live life in trees, but later in evolution some primates adapted to life on ground. Over times of prosimians to human, several characteristics has been embodied due to the adaptations to new environments and resulted in evolutionary changes. From the beginning of time earth has encountered several geological and climatic changes over time. All the current primates that have existed at that time had to adjust itself especially in body configurations and locomotion in order to better survive. It is important to be aware of this information since we are the part of occurring changes as well. Throughout the evolution owing to the transforming environments interacting with natural selection, primates developed their own ways to move better meaning changes in locomotion with different types of bodies (meaning changes in body configuration). Grade I – Lemuroids Lemuroids, including true lemurs, lorises and galagos are the most primitive ones among the living primates. As they are the first grade of primates, they evolved in about 65 million years ago, in Paleocene epoch. Lemurs and lorises are the most primitive because they are more close to ancestral traits such as their reliance on olfaction, which enhances the sense of smell. Having...
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...Holistic (multifaceted): approach to the study of human beings. Refers to an approach that studies many aspects of a multifaceted system. Cross-cultural: discovering general patterns about cultural traits Two broad classification of anthropology Biological (Physical) Seeks the emergence of humans & their later evolution (called human paleontology) and how & why contemporary human populations vary biologically (human variation) Study the fossils of human, prehumans & related animals Human genetics, population biology & epidemiology Cultural How & why cultures vary or are similar in the past & present Archaeology: study of past cultures Anthropological linguistics: study of language Ethnology: study of existing & recent cultures Archaeology Seek to reconstruct the daily life & customs of peoples who lived in the past but also to trace cultural changes & to offer possible explanations for those changes Deal with prehistory (time before written records) Historical archaeology: studies the remains of recent peoples who left written records Must used info from present & recent past in trying to understand the distant past Linguistics Study of languages Had to construct a dictionary & grammar, then could study the structure & history of language Study changes that have taken place over time Historical linguistics: study of how languages change over time & how they may be related Descriptive: focus of linguistics ...
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...human biology within the framework of evolution. There are four subfields of Biological Anthropology; genetics, human variation, paleoanthropology, and primatology. Primatology is the study of non-human primates and I find it the most interesting of the four subfields. The study of Primatology focuses on the biological and psychological aspects of non-human primates. Also it looks at the similarities shared between humans and primates. Primatologists focus on studying and conducting research on primates in three main ways; field study, laboratory study, and through captivity. In captivity, they try to replicate natural primate habitat in a controlled captive setting. This is one of the most effective ways to study primates because scientists are able to watch how primates would normally act in the wild but they have continual access to them and the also the ability to control their environment. Lastly the social and cultural aspects of primates are studied heavily. For example the individual self versus social self of primates are compared heavily to humans to try and give greater insight on human nature. There are four main groups of types of primates; Prosimians, New World Monkeys, Old World Monkeys, and Apes. Prosimians are considered the most primitive of all primates and are found in Madagascar. They are made up of Lemurs, Lorises, Galagos, and Tarsiers. The reason that they are considered the most primitive is because of their heavy reliance on sense of smell, many are...
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...Primates Research Project: The Infamous Bushmeat Trade on Bioko Island The bushmeat crisis has had a disastrous impact on primates, as well as endangered species in general, and has been a predicament in Equatorial Guinea for the past three and a half decades. On Bioko Island, a territory of Equatorial Guinea off the coast of West Africa, primates are especially in danger and have been slaughtered mercilessly for the bushmeat trade. Though bushmeat has served as a source of sustenance for those who would otherwise starve, the development of the island has factored in many more gruesome elements. Bioko Island is rather small in size but has expanses of intact forests that have been largely uninhabited by humans until recent years. Due to...
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...our ancestors, several anthropologists have found evidence to support their conclusions. In the films about Don Johanson's discovery of Lucy in Hadar, one may be very intrigued by the first film but very disturbed by the second film. I was very intrigued by the findings of the Australopithecines. The idea that Lucy, the skeleton found in Hadar, Africa, was closely related to the human species was amazing. Lucy was bipedal and her brain was smaller than that of modern humans. Lucy resembled an ape and was able to make tools to find food and weapons. Hadar, Africa was believed to be a heavily vegetated area but had evolved into a dry and desolate desert. After Lucy died, it was difficult to find her remains due to erosion and sediment in the body of water in which she died. Johanson and his team worked were able to use the advancement of technology to calculate about how old Lucy's remains were. The second film by Johanson seemed to disturb me because it discussed how some believe that all primates are killers and it portrayed this idea in film and in television. I disagree with the idea that all primates are predators and are always hunting harmless animals and destroying things. I understand that some primates must rely on hunting as a source of survival but I believe the portrayal of primates as barbaric in the film was unnecessary. In the second film, the primates were shown destroying piles of bones and throwing large objects. Johanson's film disturbed me in...
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...human biology within the framework of evolution. There are four subfields of Biological Anthropology; genetics, human variation, paleoanthropology, and primatology. Primatology is the study of non-human primates and I find it the most interesting of the four subfields. The study of Primatology focuses on the biological and psychological aspects of non-human primates. Also it looks at the similarities shared between humans and primates. Primatologists focus on studying and conducting research on primates in three main ways; field study, laboratory study, and through captivity. In captivity, they try to replicate natural primate habitat in a controlled captive setting. This is one of the most effective ways to study primates because scientists are able to watch how primates would normally act in the wild but they have continual access to them and the also the ability to control their environment. Lastly the social and cultural aspects of primates are studied heavily. For example the individual self versus social self of primates are compared heavily to humans to try and give greater insight on human nature. There are four main groups of types of primates; Prosimians, New World Monkeys, Old World Monkeys, and Apes. Prosimians are considered the most primitive of all primates and are found in Madagascar. They are made up of Lemurs, Lorises, Galagos, and Tarsiers. The reason that they are considered the most primitive is because of their heavy reliance on sense of smell, many are...
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...LA Zoo Primates There are an absence of primates all over the world that show similar characteristic to humans. At the LA Zoo some of these characteristic from these primates can be found. Gorillas and chimps are both some of the most well know apes in the world making them the faces of primes. They are both fascinating and interesting animals. Gorillas are known to be one if not the largest primate in the world, males weighing all the way from 298 to 397 lbs and the females weighing about half of that from 150 to 249lbs. Do to their heavy weight the branches are not able to support their heavy weight therefore they tend to commute on the ground rather than traveling from tree to tree like other primate. Gorillas walk in a certain way called knuckle-walking. Males are able to reach a height of 5.6 to 5.9 ft tall and females reaching a height of no more than 4.6ft and having a shorter arm span than the males. Alongside with their size they...
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...central topic of research. Margaret Mead and a few others did some research on the topic and it is sometimes included in general ethnographic studies. Proper scholarly study of human sexuality really begins with Alfred Kinsey and continues through Masters and Johnson and the Social Science Survey Project. While there has been a dramatic increase in research on the topic in the past 30 years, it is still relatively little studied, despite the modern Western obsession with sex. Because of the strong cultural interventions regarding sex and the lack of systematic research, we must piece together data from a variety of sources to ascertain the basic nature of human sexuality. We primarily rely on several sources to infer this natural state: primate studies, ethnographic data, and contemporary...
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...Chapter 22 – The Evolution of Primates Paleoanthropology the study of human evolution Primate characteristics 1. 5 digits 2. opposable thumbs or toe 3. long freely moving limbs 4. eyes in front of the head 5. relatively large brain 6. flexible hands & feet 7. nails 3 sub orders or primates 1. suborder prosimii - lemurs 2. suborder tarsiiformers- tarsiers 3. suborder anthropoidea- monkeys, apes, humans Suborder Anthropoidea 45 mya originated in asia & africa more developed cerebrum new world vs old world monkeys old world = africa and asia and europe short to no tails, nostrils downward, intensely social, ground dwellers new world = south and central america long tail, shorter thumbs or absent, aboreal, nostrils flat and open to side & social hominOIDS descended: old world monkeys 23-24 mya larger brain lack tail apes -gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees humans- a group composed of apes, and hominIDS (humans and their ancestors) hominids differences part 1 ape vs humans difference between apes and humans: humans: 1) complex curvature of the spine 2) shorter, broader pelvis 3) foramen magnum at base of skull 4) first toe aligned with other toe hominids differences part 2 ape vs humans human vs gorilla heads 1. human skull lacks the supraorbital ridge 2. has a pronounced chin 3. human brain is larger 4. teeth are arranged in a U shape Sahelantropus tchadensis earliest known hominid, small brain, face and teeth had many...
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...there were approximately one million chimpanzees in Africa. This number has declined down to 150,000. Mountain gorillas have halved in size over the last ten years, leaving only 320 to roam the trees of their homeland. Some say these great apes will face extinction within a decade. Why is this the case and should we let this happen? These apes lose areas of habitat on a daily basis. They are also constantly slaughtered for meat and body parts. These two enormous contributors of great ape depletion are just unnecessary additional threats to the existence of our relatives. We must not forget that there is also disease and environmental catastrophes that kill off these intelligent human-like primates. Humans share up to 98% of their DNA. This makes the great apes a very valuable and important subject for study. There is a lot we can learn from them. Because we are so closely related, this may also be a link to global extinction. Perhaps a more thorough evaluation of each of the factors which contribute to the depletion of the four great apes may help to understand how damaging and unnecessary this depletion has become for them, as well as for us. One of the most influential causes for the mass decline in great apes is due to habitat loss. Habitat loss includes the clearing out of forests for agriculture, timber extraction, and fuel wood. The orangutan may be in the most trouble because of this. The last large groups of these primates are located in the large rainforests of Indonesia...
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...Primate Bipedalism Andrez Guillen Anthropology 301-02 No other form of locomotion has been as dominant over the years as bipedalism. We humans take this form of stance for granted, not fully understanding its importance. Compared to other stances, such as quadrupedalism, bipedalism serves us a better in many areas. Here we will look at the the advantages of walking upright Many theories have been said about how early hominids began evolving their stance from quadrupedal to bipedal. Charles Darwin, for example, claimed that we stood up to free our hands for tool making (Douglas 2012). Others say that our evolution began up in the trees where we see other primates, such as orangutans, walk bipedal to get fruit. Another is the idea of “carrying,” here we see other primates go from a qudrapedal position to a bipedal position when carrying something of importance (offspring, food, tool). All of these theories have something in common, each shows how advantageous it is to be bipedal and it could be said that these advantages helped our ancestors survive. One possible explanation for the development of bipedalism, is our search for food. Here the argument is that 5 million years ago, fruit trees in Africa were spreading further and further apart from one another. Hominids would have to walk with their young to find fruit trees, this caused a great deal of discomfort for the females, so the solution was to have the monogamous male do the travel while the female stayed put...
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...Jeffrey Domond Biology 112 Human Origins Around six or seven million years ago in Africa, our first members of our human family the Hominidae was created in Africa. During through the six or seven million years ago, they spent much of their time in trees, like there close relatives the primates. Once the early hominids went on ground they stood and walk on two feet. That separated them and the primates. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa more than 150,000 years ago. To understand the history on how did human evolved and how they adapt to their setting. Scientist relies on evidence including fossils, artifacts, and DNA analysis. By understanding these clues and exploring the data it is clear how much we are evolved from one period to the next. In the exbiht Human Origins at the Natural History Museum fossils and DNA gave clues about the earliest members of the human family. Humans were thought to be most related to chimpanzees and bonobos. But the DNA of humans and chimpanzees is 98% the same and 2% different. Many scientists believed the 2% occurred when hominids evolved from living in trees to adapted living on the ground. DNA is considered the identifying mark of a living system such as the human evolution tree. The DNA code is complex in its basic structure. DNA is a double helix structure molecule. It’s like a long ladder and twisted into a spiral structure. DNA molecules are sugar and phosphate forms the sides of the ladder. DNA has four bases: adenine, thymine, guanine...
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...centaury. They are archeologists (scientists who study the remains of ancient human cultures) who made many discoveries. They are known for their many discoveries relating to early human evolution. The Leakey’s' findings suggested that human life originated in Africa and greatly expanded modern understandings of evolution (the theory that living organisms developed slowly over long periods of time). In 1936 Mary and Louis married, and moved to Kenya Africa to begin their work in finding the fossils that eventually made them famous archeologists. In 1948 Mary and Louis came upon more than thirty fragments of the skull of an apelike creature. The scientists came to the conclusion that this “creature” was a common ancestor of both apes and humans that lived up to 40,000,000 years ago! Mary Leakey discovered the first specimen of paranthropus boisei, a well-preserved cranium, on July 17, 1959, at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Not only was this skull the first strong and healthy australopithecine (Southern apes , but not simply apes because they were bipedal) ever found, this skull also did so much in convincing the scientific world that Darwin and Raymond Dart (Two other archeologists) had been right about their claims of Africa being the earliest scene of human evolution. Another fossil discovered by Mary and Louis nearby was named "Able Man" (or Homo Habilis) because the hominid had used stone tools. These two different human-like creatures are thought to have lived in the same place...
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...Interestingly, there is a group of living plants - the whisk ferns - which resembles Rhynia. Psilotum nudum which grows in moist, shady habitats in the Caribbean is such a plant. At one time, Psilotum was thought to be a surviving relative of Rhynia. It is, however, more generally thought to be a Fern Ally, related to the Ferns, with loss of features such as leaves and roots. Event 13 “IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORDATE” FINDING THE ANCESTOR OF VERTEBRATES (AND OURSELVES) 530 million years ago The Cambrian explosion created all the major phyla of animals that we have today. This includes the phyla Chordata (chordates). Primitive forms are creatures with evidence of a notochord, a structural rod of cartilage and neural tissue running down the long axis of the body. This notochord was the early precursor to the spine in vertebrates (animals with a true backbone, like fish), and modern examples of simple chordates include sea squirts and lancelets. Two Cambrian fossil localities are of key importance here: Chengjiang in Yunnan Province, southern China, and the Burgess Shales in the British Columbia Rockies of Canada. Both of these localities have produced fossils classified as chordates. The Chinese forms include the forms Myllokunmingia and Haikouichthys (it has even been suggested these could be primitive vertebrate jawless fish). The Canadian form (somewhat later in the Cambrian period) is Pikaia, which especially resembles the modern lancelet. Event 15 “GET OUT OF THE...
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