Exam 20: Human Evolution

All of the following traits are shared by all great apes,except ________.

In 2003,fairly complete remains of what was claimed to be a new species of hominin were described from the Indonesian island of Flores.The species,Homo floresiensis,may have lived between 100,000 and perhaps as recently as 12,000 years ago; because of its small stature,about three feet (1 meter),it was perhaps unfortunately nicknamed "hobbit" (it didn't help that film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King came out the same year).If Homo floresiensis is a real species,it lived at the same time and general area as fully modern humans.However,some scientists are convinced that the bones belonged to a fully modern human who suffered from a growth disorder of some kind.Devise a detailed hypothesis for the origins and relationships of Homo floresiensis,and come up with the best test that you can,given that it has not yet been possible to extract DNA from the fossils.

The peoples of Africa have often been negatively stereotyped by Europeans and Americans as "primitive" and "less advanced" than other peoples.Recent genetic analyses show that Africans make up the earliest branches of the human family tree.But do these two statements mean the same thing? Does genetic research imply anything about the relative "advancement" (or lack thereof)of different human groups?

Modern humans have lost the system of air sacs that other great apes have.Whatever the reason for this loss,one resulting effect on human behavior was ________.

In humans and possibly even in chimpanzees,there seems to be a neurological correlation between ________ and ________.

Which piece of evidence BEST supports the "multiregional evolution" model of the evolution of modern humans?

Most DNA-based phylogenetic analyses place humans and chimpanzees (including bonobos)as each other's closest relatives,but a persistent minority of studies place gorillas and chimpanzees as sharing a common ancestor that was not a human ancestor.The reason is incomplete lineage sorting,which simply means that ________.

Human populations vary genetically,but the variation is subtle and not easy to find without large data sets.Most of the genetic variation in the human species exists between ________.

Short sequences of nucleotides (typically 4 to 8 bases)that are repeated a variable number of times at a locus are known as ________.[three words]

All non-African humans today show evidence of a limited amount of past interbreeding with ________.