ARCH 131 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: East African Rift, Aegyptopithecus, Sivalik Hills

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Archaeology
• Course: ARCH 131
• Professor: Dennis Sandgathe

Document Summary

Studying other primates will inform us about our own evolutionary history. We are also interested in examining evolutionary processes in action. Many of the processes of natural selection that are acting on modern primate species are likely similar to those that played a role in our own emergence. Chordata > mammalia > eutheria (placental mammals) > primata. Arboreal quadrupedalism (walking on 2 or 4 limbs) Bipedalism (occasional, habitual/facultative, obligate: generalized dentition, have bunodont molars (primates have a wide diet, specialized to grind meat + vegetation) Adaptive radiation: rapid speciation of one or more species to fill a different ecological niches, usually follows a major change in environmental circumstances. Divergent evolution: typical course of natural selection in which related species adapting to different ecological cinches slowly diverge from each other in form. Homologies/homologous traits: traits shared by different species due to common ancestry. Spinal cord in vertebrates, milk glands in mammals.