The main difference between gracile and robust is that gracile species had smaller cheek teeth, pronounced prognathism, less flared cheeks, and no sagittal crest, but robust species had enormous cheek teeth, robust jaws and massive jaw muscles, sometimes anchored to a bony crest running along the top of the skull.
They are characterized by several features of the skull that give them a "robust" appearance when compared to other, more gracile hominins. The most notable of these features are large, thickly enameled, postcanine teeth that were supported by deep and broad mandibular corpora with tall and broad rami (Fig.
History of Discovery:After Prof.Raymond Dart described it and named the species Australopithecus africanus (meaning southern ape of Africa), it took more than 20 years for the scientific community to widely accept Australopithecus as a member of the human family tree.
Paranthropus robustus is an example of a robust australopithecine; they had very large megadont cheek teeth with thick enamel and focused their chewing in the back of the jaw. It is now known that 'robust' refers solely to tooth and face size, not to the body size of P.
Terms in this set (16)
- Pre-Australopithecines.
- Sahelanthropus Tchadensis (7 - 6 mya)
- Orrorin Tugenesis (6 mya)
- Ardipithecus Kadabba (5.8 mya)
- Ardipithecus Ramidus (4.4 mya)
- Australopithecines.
- Australopithecus Anamensis (4 mya)
- Australopithecus (Kenyanthropus) platyops (3.5 mya)
Gracile australopithecines refers to true members of the genus Australopithecus such as A. afarensis and A. africanus.
| SPECIES |
|---|
| early hominins | gracile species | Australopithecus garhi |
| Australopithecus sediba |
| robust species | Paranthropus aethiopicus |
| Paranthropus robustus |
1 : slender, slight. 2 : graceful.
Would you also classify Australopithecus africanus as gracile, or is it a robust australopithecine? What features support your argument? Answers will vary. Some paleoanthropologists consider Australopithecus africanus to be robust despite its gracile cranium, due to its large molars.
Scientists have discovered evidence that human ancestors were using stone tools and consuming meat from large mammals nearly a million years earlier than previously documented. The bones are about 3.4 million years old and provide the first evidence that Australopithecus afarensis used stone tools and consumed meat.
Gigantopithecus, (Gigantopithecus blacki), genus of large extinct apes represented by a single species, Gigantopithecus blacki, which lived during the Pleistocene Epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) in southern China.
Is Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy) Gracile or Robust? Lucy is Gracile.
The main difference between Paranthropus and Australopithecus is that Paranthropus is more robust whereas Australopithecus is more gracile. In addition, Paranthropus has larger teeth known as molars and larger jaw while Australopithecus has smaller teeth and a smaller jaw.
Derived features, such as thick enamel, intermediately sized molars, and reduced canines are also hallmarks of Au. afarensis1. The lower limbs clearly show this species was bipedal, while the upper limb morphology suggests Au. afarensis may have continued to practice some form of arboreality.
Australopithecina or Hominina is a subtribe in the tribe Hominini. The members of the subtribe are generally Australopithecus (cladistically including the genera Homo, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus), and it typically includes the earlier Ardipithecus, Orrorin, Sahelanthropus, and Graecopithecus.
Australopithecus is the real ancestor of modern man.
Discovered in 1924, the Taung Child was the first evidence of early human species in Africa. The name Australopithecus africanus literally means 'southern ape of Africa. ' It was named for the fact that it lived in modern-day South Africa.
They also had small canine teeth like all other early humans, and a body that stood on two legs and regularly walked upright. Their adaptations for living both in the trees and on the ground helped them survive for almost a million years as climate and environments changed.
Two types of australopithecines were using two different types of locomotion in East Africa: one was a climber and the other a biped. The discovery of Kenyanthropus platyops was important mainly because: it showed diversity in the hominin fossil record 3.5 mya.
Lucy, a 3.2 million-year old fossil skeleton of a human ancestor, was discovered in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia.
