While Dart and Bloom continued to discover Australopithecus in South Africa, the famous British paleoanthropologists Leakey and his wife (Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey) were also working hard in East Africa. On July 17, 1959, after nearly 30 years of unremitting search, they finally got their reward. Mary discovered an almost complete skull and a lower leg bone of an Australopithecus in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. The skull is particularly thick, with "grindstone molars" similar to those of the South African Australopithecus stout species on the gums, but it is thicker than its South African "cousins". Louis named the specimen Homo pouidis in recognition of his support of the couple's work in Olduvai Gorge and other areas. The name "East African Homo" has now been abandoned, and the corresponding specimen is now called Australopithecus baumannii, and its age was determined to be 1.75 million years ago.
Sexual dimorphism in Australopithecus baculae
Starting in 1967, Howell, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, led an excavation team to investigate and excavate in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia. They discovered a large number of hominin fossils, including those about 3 million years ago that were similar to those of Australopithecus apes. The African species is similar, and the one that dates to about 2 million years ago is similar to the Australopithecus baumannii species.
Beginning in 1968, Richard Leakey, the son of the Leakeys, led a working group to carry out large-scale excavations in the area east of Lake Tekana in Kenya, and obtained many well-preserved and fairly complete skulls. Some of them are very similar to the Australopithecus bauensis species found in Olduvai, Tanzania. From the size of these bones, we know that the males of Australopithecus were much larger than the females: it is speculated that the height of the male can exceed 1.5 meters, while the female is barely 1.22 meters; the weight of the male is almost twice that of the female! This huge difference in male and female body size is called sexual dimorphism and can be seen today only in populations of baboons living in the savanna. Sexual dimorphism does not exist in monogamous (i.e., monogamous) species, but is always associated with polygyny (polygamy), an adaptation in which males compete with each other for females.
Australopithecus australopithecine
animal tags：
you may also like
The cave bear Ursus spelaeus (and its ancestor Ursus deningeri) is an iconic fossil species in Europe during the Quaternary Period and one of the earliest fossil species recognized by humans. The giant bears once roamed Europe and were known to live in caves. In the evolutionary history of more than...
Tsaidamotherium is a medium-sized bovine animal of the order Muskoxen, which lived in the early late Miocene. The shape of the Qaidam beast's horn is very special and complex, and can be called a "horn organ": there is a large disc-shaped bone structure on the parietal bone, called the poster...
The Tasmanian tiger is to Australia what the Sasquatch is to North America—a creature often seen by deluded amateurs but never actually seen in captivity. The difference, of course, is that Sasquatch is a complete myth, while the Tasmanian tiger is a real marsupial that only became extinct about a...
We already know that based on the development of the temporal part of the skull, that is, the relationship between the development and changes of the temporal foramen, scientists divide reptiles (classes) into four subclasses, namely Anosus, Monossus, and Platysus. and Dicypodia. On this basi...
In 1973, farmers in Heshui County, Gansu Province discovered a piece of white ivory while digging in the sand. After 35 days of excavation by the excavation team, all the fossils were finally exposed: it was the skeleton of an elephant, inserted diagonally in the sand, with its feet stepping on ston...
In addition to corals, coelenterates also include polyps and jellyfish. Both coelenterates and sponges are diploblasts, but they are more advanced than sponges because they already have the division of labor between nerve cells and primitive muscle cells. Coelenterates al...
On July 11, "Current Biology" published online the latest research results of Zou Jingmei, Dong Liping, Zhou Zhonghe of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology, and Zheng Xiaoting of the Tianyu Museum: a dromaeosaur from the Jehol Biota in the Early Cretaceous. The stomach of Microraptor zha...
In recent years, a large number of basically well-preserved bison (Bison) fossil materials have been discovered in Northeast my country, providing important materials for further research on bison fossils. Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the...
Email: jsset#163.com (change # to @) Please indicate your purpose of visit! Guangdong ICP No. 2022053326 XML| map| Chinese
