Australopithecines Human Evolution

Australopithecines, early hominins, were characterized by fossil evidence as having a combination of ape-like and human traits (Eadie, 2015, 10/07/2015). Studies of australopithecines fossils indicated they had bipedalism locomotion, pelvis, leg bones and small teeth’s like modern humans (Eadie, 2015, 10/07/2015). With this, australopithecines human-like traits shed light to human evolution. Australopithecines’ skeleton structures tell us that our ancestors moved around in a bipedal locomotion. The ilium bones of the pelvis rotated from the back to underneath the torso to support bipedal locomotion (Eadie, 2015, 10/07/2015). The dynamic that caused the upright position in australopithecines and modern humans was that the hip joint, where the

Small teeth in australopithecines revealed that their diet was based on C4 plants, such as grass and sedges (Eadie, 2015, 10/07/2015). This reinforced the idea that our ancestors, the australopithecines, spent more time on ground because they ate things from the plain rather than from the forest (Eadie, 2015, 10/07/2015). Even though such traits of australopithecines suggested they spent more time in the plane they also spent time sleeping on the trees for their safety (Eadie, 2015, 10/07/2015). The skeleton of australopithecines informs us a lot about their social structure. For example, their small canines indicate that they no longer needed to fight as much for mates or to protect or get territory (Eadie, 2015, 10/07/2015). Another trait that gives us some information about australopithecines social structure is sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism demonstrated that the male was significantly larger than a female, which indicated that the male was the dominant partner (Eadie, 2015. 10/07/2015). The male had to protect their mate and thus, needed to be stronger. Also, australopithecines group structure demonstrated there was less competition and more cooperative making them human like (Eadie, 2015,