<i>Australopithecus sediba</i>
            : A New Species of
            <i>Homo</i>
            -Like Australopith from South Africa

Berger, Lee R.; Ruiter, Darryl J. de; Churchill, Steven E.; Schmid, Peter; Carlson, Kristian J.; Dirks, Paul H.G.M.; Kibii, Job M.

doi:10.1126/science.1184944

Cited by 509 publications

(342 citation statements)

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“…Fossils of this age provide strong evidence for bipedal behavior, including restructured pelvic and lower limb bones, reshaped vertebrae, and footprints reflecting a heel-toe strike and nondivergent hallux of the australopithecines (e.g., [6][7][8]. Limb lengths and proportions of AL-288 (Au.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Body composition in Pan paniscus compared with Homo sapiens has implications for changes during human evolution

Zihlman

Bolter

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The human body has been shaped by natural selection during the past 4-5 million years. Fossils preserve bones and teeth but lack muscle, skin, fat, and organs. To understand the evolution of the human form, information about both soft and hard tissues of our ancestors is needed. Our closest living relatives of the genus Pan provide the best comparative model to those ancestors. Here, we present data on the body composition of 13 bonobos (Pan paniscus) measured during anatomical dissections and compare the data with Homo sapiens. These comparative data suggest that both females and males (i) increased body fat, (ii) decreased relative muscle mass, (iii) redistributed muscle mass to lower limbs, and (iv) decreased relative mass of skin during human evolution. Comparison of soft tissues between Pan and Homo provides new insights into the function and evolution of body composition.body composition | bonobo | Pan paniscus | human evolution | Homo sapiensT he human body has been shaped by natural selection during the past 4-5 million years. The large brain and expanded neurocranium of Homo sapiens (1,100-1,550 cm 3 ) is triple the size of closely related chimpanzees (Pan, 275-420 cm 3 ) and fossil australopithecines (e.g., Australopithecus afarensis AL-444, 550 cm 3 ; Australopithecus africanus Taung, 382 cm 3 ; and Australopithecus sediba MH1, 420 cm 3 ) (1-6). Long lower limbs in humans accommodate habitual bipedality and contrast with the relatively short lower limbs of quadrupedal African apes. These changes in limb proportions can be tracked across millions of years of australopithecine and early Homo remains, (e.g., partial skeletons of Au. afarensis AL-288 "Lucy," Au. africanus STS 14, Homo erectus WT 15000 "Nariokotome Boy") (7-9).Fossils, even relatively complete ones, preserve only bone, one component of body composition and a small proportion of body mass. The remaining muscle, skin, fat, and vital organs that make up the other 85% do not leave a record, although, separately and together, they underpin locomotor activity, energetics, health, and reproduction (10-14). There has been much speculation about their interrelationships. The "expensive tissue hypothesis" attempts to explain the threefold expansion of the human brain (15-18). It argues that because human brain tissue requires a disproportionately high energy supply, its increase during evolution necessitated a compensatory decrease in another component, the gastrointestinal tract (18). Another hypothesis suggests that body fat in australopithecines was as high as the body fat of modern hunter-gatherers (19). Tests of hypotheses about the evolution of body composition require a comparative database, one that includes the major tissues.One way to fill in the missing information is to compare human body composition with the body composition of our closest living relatives, members of the genus Pan (20, 21). Few such comparative data are available on apes (but cf. 22-25). The rarity of apes in captivity, their long lives, and the logistics of obtaining ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Body composition in Pan paniscus compared with Homo sapiens has implications for changes during human evolution

Zihlman

Bolter

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…[118][119][120] But there is conclusive evidence that a lot of supposedly human features were acquired in parallel in different lineages of Pleistocene hominins. Probable parallelisms include the increased basicranial flexion and other basicranial apomorphies seen in late robust Australopithecus species 53:194 ; molar reduction and humanlike changes in the pelvis and hand in A. sediba [121][122][123] ; brain enlargement in some habilines (KNM-ER 1470) and facial and dental reduction in others (KNM-ER 1813); and so on. If our family tree within the genus Homo is as bushy and speciose as some like to think, 124 then parallel evolution was also rampant throughout the later Pleistocene, with brain enlargement and correlated cranial changes taking place independently between 1.0 and 0.3 Mya in the local Homo populations of Africa, Java (Ngandong), Europe (Neandertals), and perhaps in other isolated demes.…”

Section: Human Origins?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Primate origins, human origins, and the end of higher taxa

Cartmill

2012

Evolutionary Anthropology

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When people learn that I study human evolution and we start talking about it, they sometimes ask me, “How long ago did the first humans live?” My answer is usually another question: “What do you mean by 'humans'?” That response seems as baffling and wrong‐headed to them as their question seems to me, and it usually takes us a while to straighten things out. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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“…This is especially true for the hominin-bearing southern African cave sites, where variably preserved remains of Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo have been sometimes discovered commingled and where taxonomic diversity is revealing wider than previously assumed (Berger et al, 2010(Berger et al, , 2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%