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Welcome to the third part of the session on primate evolution.

In this, you will complete an assignment on the origins and

the evolution of modern humans.

Your own investigation will shed light on when some central

developments in human evolution took place.

For your assignment, you will use the Natural History Museum of

Denmark's award winning online interactive education resource The Human Animal.

Here you will study, measure, and compare similarities and

differences in the skulls of these four extinct and living hominids.

A chimpanzee, a modern human, as well as the skulls of the extinct Australopithecus

afarensis and Homo erectus.

Your objective will be to deduce if various traits such as walking upright,

using complex tools, the type of diet, as well as preparing or

cooking your food, was present or not in each of the two extinct species.

This can be deduced by observing an anatomical feature in the skull or

skeleton of one of the modern species and

then linking it to a specific trait of the behavior appearance.

If the same anatomical feature can be found in an extinct species, it is

reasonable to assume that the species possessed the same behavioral trait or

appearance, even though we can no longer observe it directly in the species.

Therefore, your assignment is based on the discipline of comparative anatomy.

Comparisons are made from making several series of measurements on the skulls.

In each series, you make exactly the same measurement in each skull and

note the result down, then you compare the measurements between the four skulls.

It is especially important to compare similarities in measurements between

the living and the extinct species.

Now this can be used to deduce traits in the later

even though they're no longer around.

In reality, you would be measuring the skulls using a set of calipers.

In the online environment of the human animal, there's an electronic tool which

allows you to do the same, and 3D scans of each skull.

The tool also automatically records your measurements for you.

Before you begin, be sure to read and see the small introductory video where

my colleague Jorn Madsen explains the relevance of the human animal and

demonstrates the measuring tools.

Also spend some time just playing around with the online measurement tool,

rotate the skulls, remove or the lower jaw in the program

in order to familiarize yourself with the 3D environment.

For your assignment you just complete three and ideally four measurement series.

At least two of these should relate to the lower jaw and the teeth.

Otherwise, choose assignments based on your assumptions or

hypothesis about interesting correlations between character traits and species.

Write down your hypothesis and

afterwards consider whether you were proven right or not.

It's very important that you read the assignment text early

before proceeding to the measurements in each assignment.

Also, feel very free to download the teacher's guide on the homepage.

Also intended for high school teachers, this guide contains lots of useful

hints and tips for completing the various measurements series, and

how to get around the tricky parts of measuring.

And, once you begin doing measurements, remember to save and

download your completed series, which you will use in this end of session quiz.

In addition to the online measuring tool,

The Human Animal consists of three small documentary films on human evolution,

which had been subtitled in English for your convenience.

Thank you for your attention and good luck with the human animal.

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11.3 Primate Systematics: Human Evolution Assignment Part 3 - Bent Lindow

Origins - Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life

Meet the Instructors