See more from this Division: Pardee Keynote Sessions
See more from this Session: Breakthroughs in Paleontology: The Paleontological Society Centennial Symposium
Abstract:
The last century of hominid paleontology has seen the veil lift progressively from younger to older. The illumination of early hominid diversity and phylogenetic relationships began with Dart's breakthrough discovery of South Africa's Taung child in 1924, but decades passed before Australopithecus was afforded hominid status. Breakthrough discoveries at Kromdraii (1938) and Olduvai Gorge (1959) established beyond doubt the presence of a robust hominid clade. Even older fossils from Hadar and Laetoli (1970s) then revealed very primitive Australopithecus. The four-million-year horizon was broken during the 1990s to reveal the presence of Ardipithecus. Today hominid paleobiology is probing at the roots and branches of the clade with a wide assortment of tools ranging from DNA sequencers to micro-CT scanners, but the next major breakthroughs will continue to be based on fieldwork, the discipline's bedrock.
See more from this Division: Pardee Keynote Sessions
See more from this Session: Breakthroughs in Paleontology: The Paleontological Society Centennial Symposium