All family trees show the descendents of an ancestor. The theory of common descent is that all life originated from single cellular organisms. Now, gradually during our evolution our quadruped ancestors became bipeds. Are we humans their only descendents or do non-human biped hominids exist, either today or in the fossil record?
My theory is that the first biped hominids had many descendents, whom we obviously share a common ancestry. Some were unable to adapt to their habitat, others returned to quadrupedalism and a small group did adapt and formed us humans today.
SIDENOTE: This transition was just a small part of our evolution and we can see that several hominid species account for this. But how about our magnitude of touch sensors and face muscles. There must be several transitional species for the evolution of each of these traits. We are familiar with the descent of man pictures, but in reality there must have been thousands of species involved in our evolution. Thoughts?
2007-11-12
22:19:23
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3 answers
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asked by
Future Human
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in
Biology