Exam 4: What Can the Fossil Record Tell Us About Human Origins

Describe three different kinds of evidence that paleoanthropologists use for assigning fossils to different hominin genera. Use specific examples. How do these forms of evidence complement each other to provide a fuller picture of the evolutionary story?

What characterizes the burial practices during the Upper Paleolithic period?

Modern human beings in the Upper Paleolithic/Late Stone Age

The subfield of evolutionary studies that devotes attention to short-term evolutionary changes is

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) recovered from a fossil hominin from Sima de los Huesos in northern Spain shows connections to the mtDNA of

The hypothesis that evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens occurred gradually throughout the traditional range of H. erectus is the

The first anatomically modern humans (H. sapiens), to reach the Americas are called Denisovans.

As it has become increasingly clear to paleoanthropologists that human beings are the product of mosaic evolution,

Which of the following is NOT a typical feature of the skull of Homo erectus?

The average Neandertal cranial capacity

The Denisovans are a population of

The "Lucy" fossil is famous because

The role women play in food procurement in contemporary foraging societies suggests that a unique skill in the earliest human societies was the

It is now generally accepted that the earliest evidence for anatomically modern humans comes from

A process in which natural selection is seen to operate among variant, related species within a single genus, family or order, is called

Which of the following statements describes Neandertal culture?

The study of the various processes that bones and stones undergo in the course of becoming part of the fossil and archaeological records is called

Anatomically modern human beings are about how many years old?

Identify and describe the four key evolutionary changes that occurred during hominin evolution and why is each important?

Richard Potts describes the evolutionary history of the human species as "survival of the generalist" because