Each student will prepare a brief presentation a hominid species or group of spe

Question

Each student will prepare a brief presentation a hominid species or group of species of your choice. You may use powerpoint or keynote, or any online presentation program of your choice (such as Prezi). The last slide should be your works cited page, and contain proper sources and citations. You need to include at least FOUR academic sources (popular science journals and magazines are ok as well). URL links are NOT properly formatted citations. The presentation must include the following details about each species:

Date ranges
Habitats
Geographic distribution (discuss any key specific fossil finds)
Morphology
Diet
Behavior (including tool use, mating or social patterns, language, ‘material culture’)
Discuss the place of the species in the hominid lineage (who are they believed to be descended from or ancestors to? were they an evolutionary dead end? Include disagreements between scientists and the evidence used to support each argument)
Hominid Species to choose from

Gracile and Robust Australopithecines: Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus and A. garhi; Australopithecus aethiopicus, A. boisei, A. robustus
Homo habilis
Homo erectus
Homo neanderthalensis
Archaic and Early modern Homo sapiens (200k-25k)

Explanation / Answer

[AS IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO UPLOAD POWERPOINT PRESENTATION HERE, PLEASE FIND THE information HERE, I HOPE IT WILL BE VERY EASY TO MAKE ONE WITH THE HELP OF THESE INFORMATIONS.]

Homo Neanderthals

Date range: Middle to Late Pleistocene (0.430 – 0.038) my.

Habitat: Early Neanderthals were only known from European sites. Later, many fossils were found in widely spread regions of Western, Central, Eastern, and Mediterranean Europe, as well as Southwest, Central, and Northern Asia up to the Altai Mountains in Siberia. No remains have been found outside Eurasia. They are believed to evolve in Europe and Asia only.

Geographic distribution (discuss any key specific fossil finds):

They are distributed in Europe and Asia. They ranged widely in Eurasia, from Portugal and Wales in the west across to the Altai Mountains of Siberia in the east. The eastern-most occurrence of a Neanderthal may be represented by a fossil skull from China known as ‘Maba’.

specific fossil finds :

Morphology:

Their average brain size was larger than the human brain, the braincase is longer and lower. They had a marked prominent bulge at the back of the skull, prominent brow ridges above the eyes. The face was also significantly different from other hominid species and can be identified easily. Their face is protruded forward, with a big, wide nose. They had large front teeth with scratch marks. They had strong muscular bodies with wide hips and shoulders. Adults grew to about 1.50-1.75m tall and weighed about 64-82kg. Height decreased during evolution, while weight almost remained same. Their physique gave them great power to live in extreme climates and also helped in hunting.

Diet:

Neanderthals were carnivorous, ice age hunters and scavengers. Their diet also includes various plants. They used to feed on red deer, reindeer, ibex, wild boar, aurochs, also mammoth like rhinoceros and elephants.

Behavior (including tool use, mating or social patterns, language, ‘material culture’):

They were primarily hunters. They made stone tools. They were excellent tool makers, developed an innovative stone technology known as the Levallois technique. This involved making pre-shaped stone cores that could be finessed into a finished tool at a later time. They used to live in smaller and sparsely distributed groups. They were intelligent enough to communicate, some sign symbols can be found from artistic materials found. They used to wear animal hides. They also used fire for the living. There have been some researches regarding their interbreeding with the modern human.

Both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans are thought to have evolved from Homo erectus between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Their disappearance is a big matter of debate among scientists. Whether they were replaced by Homo sapiens or interbred with new species Homo sapiens and may still exist today is still a big question.

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