Fossil humans

Article By:

Delson, Eric Lehman College and Graduate Center, The City University of New York; Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York.

Baab, Karen L. Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York.

Last reviewed:February 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.270300

Show previous versions

• Fossil humans, published June 2014:Download PDF Get Adobe Acrobat Reader

Ancient fossilized members of human beings and those species directly ancestral to modern humans. Fossil humans comprise all prehistoric skeletal remains of humans that are archeologically earlier than the Neolithic (necessarily an imprecise limit, but approximately 10,000 years ago), regardless of the degree of mineralization or fossilization of bone, and regardless of whether the remains may be classed as Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) or a more ancient species. In this sense, the term "humans" is used broadly to mean all primates related to living people since the last common ancestor of people and African apes; therefore, this definition encompasses all species included in the genera Homo (Fig. 1), Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, and Paranthropus (as well as potentially others). See also: Anthropology; Apes; Australopith; Fossil; Fossil apes; Fossil primates; Neolithic; Phylogeny; Physical anthropology; Primates

The content above is only an excerpt.