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Sahelanthropus
''Sahelanthropus tchadensis'' is an extinct species of the Homininae (African apes) dated to about , during the Miocene epoch. The species, and its genus ''Sahelanthropus'', was announced in 2002, based mainly on a partial cranium, nicknamed ''Toumaï'', discovered in northern Chad. ''Sahelanthropus tchadensis'' lived close to the time of the chimpanzee–human divergence, possibly related to '' Orrorin'', a species of Homininae that lived about one million years later. It may have been ancestral to both humans and chimpanzees (which would place it in the tribe Hominini), or alternatively an early member of the tribe Gorillini. In 2020, the femur was analyzed, and it was found that ''Sahelanthropus'' was not bipedal, casting some doubt on its position as a human ancestor, but this was refuted in 2022. Taxonomy Discovery Funded by the Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco–Tchadienne, Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye, Fanoné Gongdibé, Mahamat Adoum, and Alain Beauvilain identified t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hominini
The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The term was originally introduced by Camille Arambourg (1948). Arambourg combined the categories of ''Hominina'' and ''Simiina'' due to Gray (1825) into his new subtribe. Traditionally, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans were grouped together as pongids. Since Gray's classification, evidence has accumulated from genetic phylogeny confirming that humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas are more closely related to each other than to the orangutan. The former pongids were reassigned to the subfamily Hominidae ("great apes"), which already included humans, but the details of this reassignment remain contested; within Hominini, not every source excludes gorillas, and not every source includes chimpanzees. Humans are the only extant species in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Brunet (paleontologist)
Michel Brunet (born April 6, 1940) is a French paleontologist and a professor at the Collège de France. In 2001 Brunet announced the discovery in Central Africa of the skull and jaw remains of a late Miocene hominid nicknamed Toumaï. These remains may predate the earliest previously known hominid remains, Lucy, by over three million years; however, this conclusion is the subject of a significant controversy. Biography Brunet was born in 1940 in Vienne, in the region of Poitou. After having passed his first years in the countryside, at 8 he moved with his family to Versailles. He took a Ph.D. in paleontology at the Sorbonne and then became Professor of Vertebrate paleontology at the University of Poitiers, specializing in hoofed mammals. A turning point in Brunet's career was when he heard that paleoanthropologist David Pilbeam was searching for fossil apes in Pakistan and the ancestors of the hominids. This spurred Brunet to form with his colleague Emile Heintz a team wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo
''Homo'' () is the genus that emerged in the (otherwise extinct) genus '' Australopithecus'' that encompasses the extant species ''Homo sapiens'' ( modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely related to modern humans (depending on the species), most notably '' Homo erectus'' and '' Homo neanderthalensis''. The genus emerged with the appearance of '' Homo habilis'' just over 2 million years ago. ''Homo'', together with the genus '' Paranthropus'', is probably sister to '' Australopithecus africanus'', which itself had previously split from the lineage of '' Pan'', the chimpanzees. '' Homo erectus'' appeared about 2 million years ago and, in several early migrations, spread throughout Africa (where it is dubbed '' Homo ergaster'') and Eurasia. It was likely that the first human species lived in a hunter-gatherer society and was able to control fire. An adaptive and successful species, ''Homo erectus'' persisted for more than a mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biped
Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism moves by means of its two rear limbs or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning 'two feet' (from Latin ''bis'' 'double' and ''pes'' 'foot'). Types of bipedal movement include walking, running, and hopping. Several groups of modern species are habitual bipeds whose normal method of locomotion is two-legged. In the Triassic period some groups of archosaurs (a group that includes crocodiles and dinosaurs) developed bipedalism; among the dinosaurs, all the early forms and many later groups were habitual or exclusive bipeds; the birds are members of a clade of exclusively bipedal dinosaurs, the theropods. Within mammals, habitual bipedalism has evolved multiple times, with the macropods, kangaroo rats and mice, springhare, hopping mice, pangolins and hominin apes (australopithecines, including humans) as well as various other extinct groups evolving the tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Ape
The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); ''Gorilla'' (the eastern and western gorilla); '' Pan'' (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and ''Homo'', of which only modern humans remain. Several revisions in classifying the great apes have caused the use of the term ''"hominid"'' to vary over time. The original meaning of "hominid" referred only to humans (''Homo'') and their closest extinct relatives. However, by the 1990s humans, apes, and their ancestors were considered to be "hominids". The earlier restrictive meaning has now been largely assumed by the term ''" hominin"'', which comprises all members of the human clade after the split from the chimpanzees (''Pan''). The current meaning of "hominid" includes all the great apes including humans. Usage still varies, however, and some scientists a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Bahrelghazali
''Australopithecus bahrelghazali'' is an extinct species of australopithecine discovered in 1995 at Koro Toro, Bahr el Gazel, Chad, existing around 3.5 million years ago in the Pliocene. It is the first and only australopithecine known from Central Africa, and demonstrates that this group was widely distributed across Africa as opposed to being restricted to East and southern Africa as previously thought. The validity of ''A. bahrelghazali'' has not been widely accepted, in favour of classifying the specimens as ''A. afarensis'', a better known Pliocene australopithecine from East Africa, because of the anatomical similarity and the fact that ''A. bahrelghazali'' is known only from 3 partial jawbones and an isolated premolar. The specimens inhabited a lakeside grassland environment with sparse tree cover, possibly similar to the modern Okavango Delta, and similarly predominantly ate C4 savanna foods—such as grasses, sedges, storage organs, or rhizomes—and to a lesser degre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homininae
Homininae (), also called "African hominids" or "African apes", is a subfamily of Hominidae. It includes two tribes, with their extant as well as extinct species: 1) the tribe Hominini (with the genus ''Homo'' including modern humans and numerous extinct species; the subtribe Hominina, comprising at least two extinct genera; and the subtribe Panina, represented only by the genus ''Pan'', which includes chimpanzees and bonobos)―and 2) the tribe Gorillini (gorillas). Alternatively, the genus '' Pan'' is sometimes considered to belong to its own third tribe, Panini. Homininae comprises all hominids that arose after orangutans (subfamily Ponginae) split from the line of great apes. The Homininae cladogram has three main branches, which lead to gorillas (through the tribe Gorillini), and to humans and chimpanzees via the tribe Hominini and subtribes Hominina and Panina (see the evolutionary tree below). There are two living species of Panina (chimpanzees and bonobos) and two livin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chimpanzee–human Last Common Ancestor
The chimpanzee–human last common ancestor (CHLCA) is the last common ancestor shared by the extant ''Homo'' (human) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzee and bonobo) genera of Hominini. Due to complex hybrid speciation, it is not currently possible to give a precise estimate on the age of this ancestral population. While "original divergence" between populations may have occurred as early as 13 million years ago (Miocene), hybridization may have been ongoing until as recently as 4 million years ago (Pliocene). In human genetic studies, the CHLCA is useful as an anchor point for calculating single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rates in human populations where chimpanzees are used as an outgroup, that is, as the extant species most genetically similar to ''Homo sapiens''. Taxonomy The taxon tribe ''Hominini'' was proposed to separate humans (genus ''Homo'') from chimpanzees ('' Pan'') and gorillas (genus ''Gorilla'') on the notion that the least similar species should be separa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Djurab Desert
The Djurab Desert (''Djourab'', ) is a desert in northern Chad. Part of the greater Sahara desert, it makes up much of the area of Chad's Borkou region. The Koro Toro settlement and maximum security prison is situated on the eastern boundary of the desert. The closest major settlements are Salal to the south and Faya-Largeau to the northeast. To the west is the Ténéré desert (the Erg of Bilma) of western Chad and Niger, to the north are the Tibesti Mountains of the central Sahara. Aeolian deflation in the northern subbasin formed the desert with an arid conditions. Desert reached through Sahara and reduced Lake Chad. Many fossils have been found in this desert, ''Kossom Bougoudi'' and ''Toros-Menalla'' being among the most bountiful fossil-bearing areas. A team led by Michel Brunet, from the University of Poitiers, excavated in the Djurab desert during the mid-1990s. In 2001, the type fossil of ''Sahelanthropus tchadensis'', a hominid species of about 7 million years ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recent" because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene is preceded by the Oligocene and is followed by the Pliocene. As Earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene, the climate slowly cooled towards a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event but consist rather of regionally defined boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene Epoch. During the Early Miocene, the Arabian Peninsula collided with Eurasia, severing the connection between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and allowing a faunal interchange to occur between Eurasia and Africa, including the dispersal of proboscideans into Eurasia. During ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molar (tooth)
The molars or molar teeth are large, flat teeth at the back of the mouth. They are more developed in mammals. They are used primarily to grind food during chewing. The name ''molar'' derives from Latin, ''molaris dens'', meaning "millstone tooth", from ''mola'', millstone and ''dens'', tooth. Molars show a great deal of diversity in size and shape across mammal groups. The third molar of humans is sometimes vestigial. Human anatomy In humans, the molar teeth have either four or five cusps. Adult humans have 12 molars, in four groups of three at the back of the mouth. The third, rearmost molar in each group is called a wisdom tooth. It is the last tooth to appear, breaking through the front of the gum at about the age of 20, although this varies from individual to individual. Race can also affect the age at which this occurs, with statistical variations between groups. In some cases, it may not even erupt at all. The human mouth contains upper (maxillary) and lower (mandib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daza Language
Daza (also known as Dazaga) is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by the Daza people inhabiting northern Chad. The Daza are also known as the Gouran (Gorane) in Chad. Dazaga is spoken by around 380,000 people, primarily in the Djurab Desert region and the Borkou region, locally called Haya or Faya-Largeau northern-central Chad, the capital of the Dazaga people. Dazaga is spoken in the Tibesti Mountains of Chad (330,000 speakers), in eastern Niger near N'guigmi and to the north (50,000 speakers). It is also spoken to a smaller extent in Libya and in Sudan, where there is a community of 3,000 speakers in the city of Omdurman. There's also a small diaspora community working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The two primary dialects of the Dazaga language are Daza and Kara, but there are several other mutually intelligible dialects, including Kaga, Kanobo, Taruge and Azza. It is closely related to the Tedaga language, spoken by the Teda, the other out of the two Toubou people groups, who r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
