The Origins of Israel and Mankind by Brendan Stannard

Reconstructed tailless Proconsul skeleton In 2010, Saadanius was described as a close relative of the last common ancestor of the crown catarrhines, and tentatively dated to 29–28 mya, helping to fill an 11-million-year gap in the fossil record. Its ancestry is thought to be species related to Aegyptopithecus, Propliopithecus, and Parapithecus from the Faiyum, at around 35 mya. The earliest known catarrhine is Kamoyapithecus from uppermost Oligocene at Eragaleit in the northern Great Rift Valley in Kenya, dated to 24 million years ago. The surviving tropical population of primates-which is seen most completely in the Upper Eocene and lowermost Oligocene fossil beds of the Faiyum depression southwest of Cairo-gave rise to all extant primate species, including the lemurs of Madagascar, lorises of Southeast Asia, galagos or 'bush babies' of Africa, and to the anthropoids, which are the Platyrrhines or New World monkeys, the Catarrhines or Old World monkeys, and the great apes, including humans and other hominids. Begun concluded that early primates flourished in Eurasia and that a lineage leading to the African apes and humans, including to Dryopithecus, migrated south from Europe or Western Asia into Africa.

Notharctus tenebrosus, American Museum of Natural History, New Yorkĭavid R.

The Homo genus is evidenced by the appearance of H. habilis over 2 mya, while anatomically modern humans emerged in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago. Hominins (including the Australopithecine and Panina subtribes) parted from the Gorillini tribe ( gorillas) between 8–9 mya Australopithecine (including the extinct biped ancestors of humans) separated from the Pan genus (containing chimpanzees and bonobos) 4–7 mya. African and Asian hominids (including orangutans) diverged about 14 mya. Primates produced successive clades leading to the ape superfamily, which gave rise to the hominid and the gibbon families these diverged some 15–20 mya. Primates diverged from other mammals about 85 million years ago ( mya), in the Late Cretaceous period, with their earliest fossils appearing over 55 mya, during the Paleocene. The study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics.

This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins (a tribe of the African hominid subfamily), indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike. Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes all the great apes. The hominoids are descendants of a common ancestor.

The Origins of Israel and Mankind by Brendan Stannard