According to the article “ hunting the first hominid” anwers the following quest

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According to the article “ hunting the first hominid” anwers the following question ( minimum 200 mwords)

What are some the circumstances and differ cultures comforting paleo anthropologists looking for the first bipedal hominid?

Article 22 tend Hunting the First Hominid PAT SHIPMAN elf-centeredly, human beings have always taken an replace eyes and brains, although instrumentation plays a cnu cial role in the dating an analysis of fossil remains. exceptional interest in their origins. Each discovery of a new species of hominid-both our human ancestors Finding the evolutionary origin of hominids is little lik and the near-relatives arising after the split from the gorilla- stalking big game. Paleoanthropologist struggle to establišh chimp lineage-is reported with great fanfare, even though the when and where their quarry was last seen and what it w First Hominid remains elusive. We hope that, when our eari- like-hoping to follow its tracks backward in time. (Why hom est ancestor is finally captured, it will reveal the fundamenta nids or any other group arose is such a metaphysical questic that most paleoanthropologists run away screaming when i i daptations that make us us There is no shortage of ideas about the essential nature of the asked.) human species and the basic adaptations of our kind. Some say hominids are fundamentally thinkers; others favor tool-makers been estimated from molecular clock and confirmed by rai or talkers; still others argue that hunting, scavenging or bipedal ometric dates. These line of evidence converge on a perio walking made hominids special. Knowing what the First Homi between 5 million and 7 million years ago as the time wh nid looked like would add some meat to a soup flavored with primitive, perhaps vaguely apelike species evolved some dein speculation and prejudice When the first hominid slinked through the underbush has tive new adaptation that transformed it into the First Hominid Genetic and molecular studies provide one sort of insight But like the point of inflection on a line graph, the first species showing what sort of stuff we are made of, and that it is only n any new lineage is only readily apparent after the fact. The slightly different stuff from that which makes up the apes emergence of the first hominid was probably not obvious i (gorillas, chimps, orangutans and gibbons). From the molecular prospect but only now, in retrospect-in the context of the ent differences among the genes of humans and apes, geneticists evolutionary record of the hominids-when the long-termew estimate the time when each of the various ape and hominid lutionary trends can be seen lineages diverged from the common stem. The result is a sort of hairy Y diagram, with multiple branches instead of simply two since both our closest living relatives (chimpanzees and gori as is usual on a Y. Each terminus represents a living species; las) and all early hominids (older than about 2 million yea each branching point or node represents the appearance of some ag are African. new evolutionary trait, such as new molecules, new genes, new shapes or new proportions of limb, skul and tooth. Unfortu nately, this way of diagramming the results tends to lull us into thinking (falsely) that all the evolutionary changes occurred at What happened, exactly, and to whom, remain to be discovered those nodes, and none along the branches. Where this dangerous creature once lived has to be Africa What to Look For? Two newly discovered fossil species have each been p ropd Such studies omit a crucial part of our history: the extinct to be the First Hominid. This circumstance raises a significa species. Only the fossil record contains evidence, in context, issue: How would we know the First Hominid if we saw it? of the precise pathway that evolution took. In this technologi- cal age, when sophisticated instrumentation and gee-whiz algo people is not difficult, but misleading. It is absurd to exped rithms seem downright necessary, the most basic information all of these differences arose simultaneously during a sing about the evolution of our lineage still comes from branches evolutionary event represented by the final fork on the hairy of science that operate in rather old-fashioned ways. The pri- diagram. The first ape on the gorilla-chimp lineage was neihe mary discoveries in paleontology (the study of old things), pale a gorilla nor a chimpanzee, for modem gorillas and chimps har oanthropology (the study of old humans) and archaeology (the had at least 5 million years to evolve in isolation before arrivirg study of the old stuff that old humans leave around) still rely at their modem form. In the same way the First Hominid on ce on the efforts of handful of investigators who slog around on lineage was not a human and did not possess all of the chara foot or excavate in desolate landscapes. Fancy equipment can't teristics of modem humans. Making a list of key features that differentiate apes fre A c An ena fem in IT ro Well, 100

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Some of the circumstances comforting Paleo anthropologists looking for the first bipedal hominid are described below,

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