human evolution Background and beginnings in the Miocene

It is generally agreed that the taproot of the human family shrub is to be found among apelike species of the Middle Miocene Epoch (16.4 to 11.2 million years ago [mya]) or Late Miocene Epoch (11.2 to 5.3 mya). Genetic data based on molecular clock estimates support a Late Miocene ancestry. Various Eurasian and African Miocene primates have been advocated as possible ancestors to the early hominins, which came on the scene during the Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 1.8 mya). Though there is no consensus among experts, the primates suggested include Kenyapithecus, Griphopithecus, Dryopithecus, Graecopithecus (Ouranopithecus), Samburupithecus, Sahelanthropus, and Orrorin. Kenyapithecus inhabited Kenya and Griphopithecus lived in central Europe and Turkey from about 16 to 14 mya. Dryopithecus is best known from western and central Europe, where it lived from 13 to possibly 8 mya. Graecopithecus lived in northern and southern Greece about 9 mya, at roughly the same time as Samburupithecus in northern Kenya. Sahelanthropus inhabited Chad between 7 and 6 million years ago. Orrorin was from central Kenya 6 mya. Among these, the most likely ancestor of great apes and humans may be either Kenyapithecus or Griphopithecus.

Among evolutionary models that stress the Eurasian species, some consider Graecopithecus to be ancestral only to the human lineage, containing Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo, whereas others entertain the possibility that Graecopithecus is close to the great-ape ancestry of Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos) and Gorilla as well. In the former model, Dryopithecus is ancestral to Pan and Gorilla. On the other hand, others would have Dryopithecus ancestral to Pan and Australopithecus on the way to Homo, with Graecopithecus ancestral to Gorilla. This morphology-based model mirrors results of some molecular studies, which show chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans to be more closely related to one another than any of them is to gorillas; orangutans are more distantly related.

In a phylogenetic model that emphasizes African Miocene species, Samburupithecus is ancestral to Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Orrorin, and Orrorin begets Australopithecus afarensis, which is ancestral to Homo.

The Miocene Epoch was characterized by major global climatic changes that led to more seasonal conditions with increasingly colder winters north of the Equator. By the Late Miocene, in many regions inhabited by apelike primates, evergreen broad-leaved forests were replaced by open woodlands, shrublands, grasslands, and mosaic habitats, sometimes with denser-canopied forests bordering lakes, rivers, and streams. Such diverse environments stimulated novel adaptations involving locomotion in many types of animals, including primates. In addition, there were a larger variety and greater numbers of antelope, pigs, monkeys, giraffes, elephants, and other animals for adventurous hominins to scavenge and perhaps kill. But large cats, dogs, and hyenas also flourished in the new environments; they not only would provide meat for scavenging hominins but also would compete with and probably prey upon them. In any case, our ancestors were not strictly or even heavily carnivorous. Instead, a diet that relied on tough, abrasive vegetation, including seeds, stems, nuts, fruits, leaves, and tubers, is suggested by primate remains bearing large premolar and molar teeth with thick enamel.

Behaviour and morphology associated with locomotion also responded to the shift from arboreal to terrestrial life. The development of bipedalism enabled hominins to establish new niches in forests, closed woodlands, open woodlands, and even more open areas over a span of at least 4.5 million years. Indeed, obligate terrestrial bipedalism (that is, the ability and necessity of walking only on the lower limbs) is the defining trait required for classification in the human tribe, Hominini.