Image: Aurélien Mounier / CNRS-MNHN
An international group of scientists have found that modern humans appeared as the result of crossing two different populations of primates in Africa. About it reported in a press release on Phys.org.
The researchers analyzed 263 skulls of fossil and modern members of the tribe hominini (for hominids) to create three-dimensional models. It turned out that there is a correlation between the average size of the skull of each of the 29 populations of primates and the position of this population in the phylogenetic tree. This allowed the researchers to calculate the likely size of the skull of the most recent ancestor of all groups of Homo sapienswho lived 300 thousand years ago.
It turned out that hominini, gave rise to the modern human type should have a round skull, high forehead, small eyebrow ridges and other features that made the reconstructed bone-like remains of the age of 100 thousand years. Comparison of virtual skulls with skulls of the genus Homo, which lived 130-350 thousand years ago, showed that Homo sapiens arose as a result of hybridization of populations from southern and Eastern Africa.
The phylogenetic tree diagram showing the evolutionary relationships between different species and other taxa of living organisms.
Video, photo All from Russia.