Parent Species of Homo Sapiens

[Tony]

Is there a scientific consensus about the species that is the direct progenitor of homo sapiens? I know there are many cousin species and ancestral species, but I haven't found any info on this. A "parent species of homo sapiens" doesn't really bring up anything useful.

 

[Illustronic]

A Lemur like creature a few million years ago, (i hear). Google it.

 

[shadron]

Is there a scientific consensus about the species that is the direct progenitor of homo sapiens? I know there are many cousin species and ancestral species, but I haven't found any info on this. A "parent species of homo sapiens" doesn't really bring up anything useful.

It's a toss-up between H erectus/ergastor and H heidelburgensis/rhodensiensis.

Erectus lately is being reserved for Asia finds, and ergastor for the equivalent African.

Try human evolution^WP.

 

[Damien Evans]

Probably Homo Heidelbergensis, Though there is also some suggestion of Homo Rhodesiensis, though experts are divided on whether the latter is actually a separate species.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis#Divergent_evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_rhodesiensis

 

[Damien Evans]

It's a toss-up between H erectus and H heidelburgensis.

Try human evolution^WP.

I haven't heard Erectus suggested for a long time. Current consensus is that Erectus was a mainly Asian species, and that Sapiens is descended from Homo Ergaster, a similar african species, by way of Homo Antecessor and Homo Hidelbergensis, though There is also the suggestion that Hidelbergensis is a descendent of Erectus. Either way, the current consensus is that hidelbergensis is our immediate direct ancestor.


The study of human evolution being what it is, in 10 years time the answer could well be completely different.

 

[Uncayimmy]

I hope this question is not a derail, but I think it relates since somebody mentioned whether some species were actually different species. If the world today were wiped out, and thousands of years from now people were checking out the fossils from 2010, how many species of man would there be? I'd like to think they would conclude it was just one, but we've got tribes like pygmies that are really short and others that are really tall. Eskimos (at least to me) seem to have bone structures very different from (say) the Japanese.

I hope this question makes sense.

 

[nathan]

I hope this question is not a derail, but I think it relates since somebody mentioned whether some species were actually different species. If the world today were wiped out, and thousands of years from now people were checking out the fossils from 2010, how many species of man would there be? I'd like to think they would conclude it was just one, but we've got tribes like pygmies that are really short and others that are really tall. Eskimos (at least to me) seem to have bone structures very different from (say) the Japanese.

I hope this question makes sense.

Interesting question. My guess is that it depends on how many fossils are found. If sufficient are found, there'll be evidence of intermixing -- asian skeletons in caucasian dominated areas and vice-versa. That would lead to the conclusion that we all at least interacted, probably via trade. But determining interbreeding would require finding unambiguous fossils containing traits of both racial groups.

I suppose cultural artifacts would provide stronger evidence of interbreeding. That two successful species became very wide spread, interacted and occupied the same evolutionary niche, without one wiping the other out, might strongly suggest they were not distinct species after all.

Take for example Neanderthals and H. Sapiens. We know they occupied the same territory. We know Neanderthals died out. I'm not sure if there's evidence of cultural interaction, but it's long been an open question as to whether they (we) interbred. I understand the fossil evidence does not support that conclusion (it doesn't deny it either). I think it's recently been settled with the discovery of Neanderthal-specific DNA in the current human population.

btw, fossils take millions of years to form, not thousands. In the shorter time scale you mention, there'd be dna to test.

 

[Varanid]

I hope this question is not a derail, but I think it relates since somebody mentioned whether some species were actually different species. If the world today were wiped out, and thousands of years from now people were checking out the fossils from 2010, how many species of man would there be? I'd like to think they would conclude it was just one, but we've got tribes like pygmies that are really short and others that are really tall. Eskimos (at least to me) seem to have bone structures very different from (say) the Japanese.

I hope this question makes sense.

I (personally) reject the notion that a 'species' is the 'quanta' of life. I can't imagine that we will be wrestling with the same (flawed) notions of 'species' in the distant future.

In our present paradigms this question makes sense, because we spend so much time arguing over collections of genes, wondering where to draw arbitrary boundaries.

 

[Kotatsu]

Interesting question. My guess is that it depends on how many fossils are found. If sufficient are found, there'll be evidence of intermixing -- asian skeletons in caucasian dominated areas and vice-versa. That would lead to the conclusion that we all at least interacted, probably via trade.

Or that the group contains a large number of species which show a great degree of parallelism or convergence. Red-winged Blackbirds (North America) and some Widow birds (Africa) are strikingly similar, but if we only knew them from subfossil remains of plumages, we wouldn't assume that they had a well-developed system of intercontinental trade. Likewise, if large amounts of caucasian subfossil skeletons were found in both Spain and Thailand, this might as well lead to the conclusion that both areas had independent populations of species showing these characteristics due to e.g. convergence.

I (personally) reject the notion that a 'species' is the 'quanta' of life. I can't imagine that we will be wrestling with the same (flawed) notions of 'species' in the distant future.

I don't know what alternative you would propose, but I vehemently hope that we will continue to wrestle with it, as the species concepts are a tremendously powerful and easy-to-use tool for many branches of biology, especially in areas of the world where intrusive science is less viable. It is very nice to be able to do e.g. DNA barcoding here in Europe, where I am, where resources are virtually infinite and it is easy to uphold lofty ideals about non-interacting gene pools and so on, but not necessarily as easy if you go to areas in the world where you have to rely entirely on observation to estimate biodiversity.

Of course, in many of these areas there won't be any biodiversity to estimate, so it is perhaps a moot point.

 

[nathan]

Or that the group contains a large number of species which show a great degree of parallelism or convergence. Red-winged Blackbirds (North America) and some Widow birds (Africa) are strikingly similar, but if we only knew them from subfossil remains of plumages, we wouldn't assume that they had a well-developed system of intercontinental trade. Likewise, if large amounts of caucasian subfossil skeletons were found in both Spain and Thailand, this might as well lead to the conclusion that both areas had independent populations of species showing these characteristics due to e.g. convergence.

You are correct. I was thinking of artifacts that would also be found, but failed to mention that. IIUC such artifacts can provide evidence of trade to archaeologists. but yes, if we're just going by a record of fossil bones, we can't make such a deduction.

 

[Freethinker]

I hope this question makes sense.

It makes sense, and is a very thought-provoking question.

We can associate skeletal remains to an ethnic group or "race" today. It would be interesting to know what future paleontologists might observe about current humanity from a fossil record without our knowledge and associated biases.

 

[casebro]

Are today's racial differences larger or smaller than the differences between ancestral 'sub-species'?

Studiers of bone structure can tell the difference, though intermingling does blurr the exact point of divergence. But hmmm, we don't hear about archeologists having a hard time placing a particular skull on the fossil family tree. It must happen. But some of these ancestral sub-species only have a couple examples.

 

[hgc]

Tools of Satan! Repent!!

Humans' "ancestor":

 

[Kotatsu]

An angry but crowned Johannes Brahms in the sky?

 

[Loss Leader]

I hope this question is not a derail, but I think it relates since somebody mentioned whether some species were actually different species. If the world today were wiped out, and thousands of years from now people were checking out the fossils from 2010, how many species of man would there be? I'd like to think they would conclude it was just one, but we've got tribes like pygmies that are really short and others that are really tall. Eskimos (at least to me) seem to have bone structures very different from (say) the Japanese.

I hope this question makes sense.

You've hit upon an important weakness in paleo-anthropology. Human beings don't tend to fossilize well. This is in part because there haven't been, until recently, that many of us. Also, we tend to live in climates that make preservation of remains difficult. So, for every "type" of hominid that has been discovered, there are really very, very few examples of that type. It's also rare to find even more than a bit of a skeleton.

Consequently, the hominid timeline is constantly being revised and updated as new information is found. And one set of remains might have to stand in for millions and millions of individuals.

 

[Halfcentaur]

You've hit upon an important weakness in paleo-anthropology. Human beings don't tend to fossilize well. This is in part because there haven't been, until recently, that many of us. Also, we tend to live in climates that make preservation of remains difficult. So, for every "type" of hominid that has been discovered, there are really very, very few examples of that type. It's also rare to find even more than a bit of a skeleton.

Consequently, the hominid timeline is constantly being revised and updated as new information is found. And one set of remains might have to stand in for millions and millions of individuals.

This makes me think about young Earth creationists. If all the fossils we have in the world today are from the last ten thousand years as they would claim, then they would have to say the climates of the places we find those fossils were relatively similar to what they are like today. Why are there so many of these fossils of other kinds of animals but not humans, if it all just happened in ten thousand years. What explains that void, in their understanding of things? Especially if they are going to say these fossils are due to the great flood. If all of humanity was killed but one family, you'd think there would be quite a bit of humans and modern species of animals showing up as fossils all over.

 

[Loss Leader]

you'd think there would be quite a bit of humans and modern species of animals showing up as fossils all over.

Forget that, they'd have to explain why the fossils in the walls of the grand canyon are stratified. Certain animals show up on the bottom layers then disappear altogether as one moves up, to be replaced by entirely different animals (with increasing complexity, if we can use the word with some imprecision).

 

[Uncayimmy]

btw, fossils take millions of years to form, not thousands. In the shorter time scale you mention, there'd be dna to test.

Wise guy!

In my fantasy world where mankind is wiped out, the cause also happens to accelerate fossilization.

The responses have been interesting. I don't know a lot about the subject beyond casual interest, so I had no idea if it was a dumb question or not.

 

[nathan]

In my fantasy world where mankind is wiped out, the cause also happens to accelerate fossilization.

Oh, so we're gonna be annihilated by quantum fluxon radiation then?

 

[Halfcentaur]

Forget that, they'd have to explain why the fossils in the walls of the grand canyon are stratified. Certain animals show up on the bottom layers then disappear altogether as one moves up, to be replaced by entirely different animals (with increasing complexity, if we can use the word with some imprecision).

Yes, I pointed this out a few times recently in threads here. I asked Avalon what his anti-Dawkins book had to say on the specific arrangement of fossils in the layers of the Earth, his answer was he wasn't sure and he'd like to find out,...

It's particularly comical, because the only way to explain it would be that only certain species of animals were all organized and floating in specific layers during the flood that they would sink to the ground in and fossilize. It's just silly, only certain animals have specific buoyancy? Ha!

And these buoyancy levels all match up with the collection of species we are dating and the time periods we assign them.

The only way for them to counter this is to say that animal species are not found in corroborating global layers, and that scientists are just cherry picking the incidents where they do. Or else, all species share organized degrees of buoyancy that you can organize them by.