Early African Hominins

Introduction The most well-known, universally dispersed of the early African hominins are the australopiths. This effective group of hominins is integrated of a genus known as Australopithecus. These hominins go as far back as three million years allowing them to be hominins that had lived the longest period of time and were reported on. The hominins have been located in areas of Africa and have been found to be bipedal (walk upright), have small-sized brains, and have exceptionally big teeth. Consecutively, increased amount of remains have been located in Ethiopia. The fossils that were found have been carefully examined and some are especially well known till today. (Lewis et al., 2013, pg. 213) A famous fossil discovered in
They had small-sized brains, longer arms which were useful and convenient for climbing, ape-like facial traits with slanted faces and jaws that would hang down. They also had more additional characteristics similar to apes such as a flat nose, curved fingers which had also assisted them with ape-like activities such as climbing trees. Although their jaws were more similar to apes as they would hang, their teeth were more like humans. Moving on to the skeleton, their skeletons shows that they were bipedal; they walked upright (Gauthier,
A.afarensis shares more primitive characteristics with late Miocene apes and with living great apes than do later hominins, who show various and different characteristics (Lewis et al., 2013, pg. 215). An example of this would be their teeth which had canines that were more sharp and spiked, premolars that contained a shear surface, and tooth rows that were very similar and equivalent (as shown in Figure 1). In addition to differences in the teeth, A. afarensis also have distinctive limb proportions among the hominoids. Data indicates that A.afarensis, Lucy, had attained forelimb proportions which are very much alike to those of modern humans, however their hind limbs were comparatively much