tal ock. Out of t number, tandingof ory is based on ten exceedingly fragmentary, of per it all into truck if you didn’t mind2 in ts members, traditionally called ures(including extinct ones) t are more closely related to us to any surviving cogeties believe t cans sh humans and chimps in a subfamily called homininae.
t is t tures traditionally called , on t designation.) he aue sunerfamily which includes us.
attersall, tor ofant tural ory in Neal world archive of hominid and early human bones.
tage be so bad if tributed evenly time andspace, but of course t. ten in t tantalizing fashion.
us ed territory from tlantic edge of Europe to t if you brougo life everyus individual wence we can vouc fill a school bus.
s of even less: just tial skeletons and a number of isolated limbbones. Somet-lived as our oion certainly not be kno all.
“In Europe,” tattersall offers by ration, “you’ve got ed to about 1.7 million years ago, but t a million years beforet remains turn up in Spain, riginent, and tanot a erribly muc’s from tary pieces t you’re trying to tories of entire species. It’s quite atall order. e really tle idea of tions species— deserve to beregarded as separate species at all.”
It is tc makes eacinct fromall tens of tons distributed at regular intervals torical record, t emerge instantaneously, as t gradually out of otingspecies. to a point of divergence, ties are, so tit becomes exceedingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, to distinguise us from an early is likely to be bots can often arise over questions of identification from fragmentary remains—deciding, for instance, s a female Australopithecus boiseior a male homo habilis.
ittle to be certain about, scientists often o make assumptions based on ots found nearby, and ttle more t guesses. As Alan alker andPat Se tool discovery uremost often found nearby, you early ools ly madeby antelopes.
Perter typifies tary bundle of contradictionst rates