Australopithecus

For the collective tribe, see Australopithecine.

Australopithecus
Temporal range: Zanclean – Gelasian, 4.5–1.9/1.2 mya
↓
Mrs. Ples, an Australopithecus africanus specimen
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Subtribe: Australopithecina
Genus: †Australopithecus
R.A. Dart, 1925
Type species
†Australopithecus africanus
Dart, 1925
Species

Classically excluded but cladistically included:

Australopithecus (/ˌɒstrələˈpɪθɪkəs, -loʊ-/, OS-trə-lə-PITH-i-kəs, -⁠loh-;[1] or (/ɒsˌtrələpɪˈθiːkəs/, os-TRA-lə-pi-THEE-kəs [2] from Latin australis 'southern' and Ancient Greek πίθηκος (pithekos) 'ape'[3]) is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. The genera Homo (which includes modern humans), Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus evolved from some Australopithecus species. Australopithecus is a member of the subtribe Australopithecina,[4][5] which sometimes also includes Ardipithecus,[6] though the term "australopithecine" is sometimes used to refer only to members of Australopithecus. Species include A. garhi, A. africanus, A. sediba, A. afarensis, A. anamensis, A. bahrelghazali and A. deyiremeda. Debate exists as to whether some Australopithecus species should be reclassified into new genera, or if Paranthropus and Kenyanthropus are synonymous with Australopithecus, in part because of the taxonomic inconsistency.[7][8]

Furthermore, because e.g. A. africanus is more closely related to for instance humans, or their ancestors at the time, than e.g. A. anamensis and many more Australopithecus branches, Australopithecus cannot be consolidated into a coherent grouping without also including the Homo genus and other genera.

The earliest known member of the genus, A. anamensis, existed in eastern Africa around 4.2 million years ago. Australopithecus fossils become more widely dispersed throughout eastern and southern Africa (the Chadian A. bahrelghazali indicates that the genus was much more widespread than the fossil record suggests), before eventually becoming pseudo-extinct 1.9 million years ago (or 1.2 to 0.6 million years ago if Paranthropus is included). While none of the groups normally directly assigned to this group survived, Australopithecus gave rise to living descendants, as the genus Homo emerged from an Australopithecus species[7][9][10][11][12][excessive citations] at some time between 3 and 2 million years ago.[13]

Australopithecus possessed two of the three duplicated genes derived from SRGAP2 roughly 3.4 and 2.4 million years ago (SRGAP2B and SRGAP2C), the second of which contributed to the increase in number and migration of neurons in the human brain.[14][15] Significant changes to the hand first appear in the fossil record of later A. afarensis about 3 million years ago (fingers shortened relative to thumb and changes to the joints between the index finger and the trapezium and capitate).[16]

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2003) [1917], Peter Roach; James Hartmann; Jane Setter (eds.), English Pronouncing Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-3-12-539683-8
  2. ^ Pronunciation with stressed penultimate syllable and long-E is used by anthropologists such as Lee Berger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm_tWwZSRzU) and Raymond Dart (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9A2tpvXkWQ&t=2297s) (time 38:20) and conforms to ALA-LC Romanization tables (https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/greek.pdf) and classical scholarship (Kelly, H.A., 1986. Pronouncing Latin words in English. The Classical World, 80(1), pp.33-37).
  3. ^ "Glossary. American Museum of Natural History". Archived from the original on 20 November 2021.
  4. ^ Wood & Richmond 2000.
  5. ^ Briggs & Crowther 2008, p. 124.
  6. ^ Wood 2010.
  7. ^ a b Haile-Selassie, Y (27 October 2010). "Phylogeny of early Australopithecus: new fossil evidence from the Woranso-Mille (central Afar, Ethiopia)". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 365 (1556): 3323–3331. doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0064. PMC 2981958. PMID 20855306.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Asfaw, B; White, T; Lovejoy, O; Latimer, B; Simpson, S; Suwa, G (1999). "Australopithecus garhi: a new species of early hominid from Ethiopia". Science. 284 (5414): 629–35. Bibcode:1999Sci...284..629A. doi:10.1126/science.284.5414.629. PMID 10213683.
  10. ^ "Exploring the fossil record: Australopithecus africanus". Bradshaw Foundation. Retrieved 2019-11-11.
  11. ^ Berger, L. R.; de Ruiter, D. J.; Churchill, S. E.; Schmid, P.; Carlson, K. J.; Dirks, P. H. G. M.; Kibii, J. M. (2010). "Australopithecus sediba: a new species of Homo-like australopith from South Africa". Science. 328 (5975): 195–204. Bibcode:2010Sci...328..195B. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.729.7802. doi:10.1126/science.1184944. PMID 20378811. S2CID 14209370.
  12. ^ Toth, Nicholas and Schick, Kathy (2005). "African Origins" in The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies (Editor: Chris Scarre). London: Thames and Hudson. Page 60. ISBN 0-500-28531-4
  13. ^ Kimbel, W.H.; Villmoare, B. (5 July 2016). "From Australopithecus to Homo: the transition that wasn't". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. 371 (1698): 20150248. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0248. PMC 4920303. PMID 27298460.
  14. ^ Reardon, Sara (2012-05-03). "The humanity switch: How one gene made us brainier". New Scientist. Retrieved 2020-03-06.
  15. ^ Sporny, Michael; Guez-Haddad, Julia; Kreusch, Annett; Shakartzi, Sivan; Neznansky, Avi; Cross, Alice; Isupov, Michail N.; Qualmann, Britta; Kessels, Michael M.; Opatowsky, Yarden (June 2017). "Structural History of Human SRGAP2 Proteins". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 34 (6): 1463–1478. doi:10.1093/molbev/msx094. ISSN 0737-4038. PMC 5435084. PMID 28333212.
  16. ^ Tocheri, Matthew W.; Orr, Caley M.; Jocofsky, Marc C.; Marzke, Mary W. (April 2008). "The evolutionary history of the hominin hand since the last common ancestor of Pan and Homo". Journal of Anatomy. 212 (4): 544–562. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7580.2008.00865.x. PMC 2409097. PMID 18380869.