Diet likely changed game for some hominids 3.5 million years ago

A new look at the diets of ancient African hominids shows a "game changer" occurred about 3.5 million years ago when some members added grasses or sedges to their menus, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado ...

Study: Ancient hominid males stayed home while females roamed

The males of two bipedal hominid species that roamed the South African savannah more than a million years ago were stay-at-home kind of guys when compared to the gadabout gals, says a new high-tech study led by the University ...

New species of early hominid found

(PhysOrg.com) -- A previously unknown species of hominid that lived in what is now South Africa around two million years ago has been found in the form of a fossilized skeleton of a child and several bones of adults. The ...

'Hobbit' island colonised much earlier than thought

Flores, the Indonesian island where skeletal remains of famous "hobbit hominids" were found in 2003, was colonised by humans much earlier than thought, scientists said on Wednesday.

Early hominid first walked on two legs in the woods

Among the many surprises associated with the discovery of the oldest known, nearly complete skeleton of a hominid is the finding that this species took its first steps toward bipedalism not on the open, grassy savanna, as ...

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Hominidae

The Hominidae (pronounced /hɒˈmɪnɨdiː/; anglicized hominids, also known as great apes), as the term is used here, form a taxonomic family, including four extant genera: chimpanzees (Pan), gorillas (Gorilla), humans (Homo), and orangutans (Pongo).

It is also common to use the term in a more restricted sense of humans and relatives of humans closer than chimpanzees. In this usage, all species other than Homo sapiens are extinct.

A number of known extinct genera are grouped with humans in the Homininae subfamily, others with orangutans in the Ponginae subfamily. The most recent common ancestor of the Hominidae lived roughly 14 million years ago, when the ancestors of the orangutans speciated from the ancestors of the other three genera. The ancestors of the Hominidae family had already speciated from those of the Hylobatidae family, perhaps 15-20 million years ago.

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