Genus of hominins that includes humans and their closest extinct relatives
For other uses, see Homo (disambiguation).
"Genus Homo" redirects here. For the novel, see Genus Homo (novel).
Homo
Temporal range: Late Pliocene-present, 2.8–0 Ma
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Notable members of Homo. Clockwise from top left: An approximate reconstruction of a Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) skeleton, a modern human (Homo sapiens) female with a child, a reconstructed Homo habilis skull, and a replica skull of Peking Man (subspecies of Homo erectus).
Scientific classification
Domain:
Eukaryota
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Mammalia
Order:
Primates
Suborder:
Haplorhini
Infraorder:
Simiiformes
Family:
Hominidae
Subfamily:
Homininae
Tribe:
Hominini
Subtribe:
Hominina
Genus:
Homo Linnaeus, 1758
Type species
Homo sapiens
Linnaeus, 1758
Species
Homo sapiens
†Homo antecessor
†Homo erectus
†Homo ergaster
†Homo floresiensis
†Homo habilis
†Homo heidelbergensis
†Homo longi
†Homo luzonensis
†Homo naledi
†Homo neanderthalensis
†Homo rhodesiensis
†Homo rudolfensis
For other species or subspecies suggested, see below.
Synonyms
Synonyms
Africanthropus Dreyer, 1935
Atlanthropus Arambourg, 1954
Cyphanthropus Pycraft, 1928
Palaeanthropus Bonarelli, 1909
Palaeoanthropus Freudenberg, 1927
Pithecanthropus Dubois, 1894
Protanthropus Haeckel, 1895
Sinanthropus Black, 1927
Tchadanthropus Coppens, 1965
Telanthropus Broom & Anderson 1949
Homo (from Latin homō 'human') is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens (modern humans) and a number of extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely related to modern humans, including Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago.[a]Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus.[4] The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan (which includes chimpanzees and bonobos), with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.[5]
Homo erectus appeared about 2 million years ago and spread throughout Africa (where it is called H. ergaster) and Eurasia in several migrations. An adaptive and successful species, H. erectus persisted for more than a million years and gradually diverged into new species by around 500,000 years ago.[b][6]
Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged close to 300,000 to 200,000 years ago,[7] in Africa, and H. neanderthalensis emerged around the same time in Europe and Western Asia. H. sapiens dispersed from Africa in several waves, from possibly as early as 250,000 years ago, and certainly by 130,000 years ago, with the so-called Southern Dispersal beginning about 70–50,000 years ago[8][9][10] leading to the lasting colonisation of Eurasia and Oceania by 50,000 years ago. H. sapiens met and interbred with archaic humans in Africa and in Eurasia.[11][12] Separate archaic (non-sapiens) human species including Neanderthals are thought to have survived until around 40,000 years ago.
^Stringer, C.B. (1994). "Evolution of early humans". In Jones, S.; Martin, R.; Pilbeam, D. (eds.). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 242.
^Schrenk, F.; Kullmer, O.; Bromage, T. (2007). "Chapter 9: The Earliest Putative Homo Fossils". In Henke, W.; Tattersall, I. (eds.). Handbook of Paleoanthropology. pp. 1611–1631. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-33761-4_52.
^Spoor, F.; Gunz, P.; Neubauer, S.; Stelzer, S.; Scott, N.; Kwekason, A.; Dean, M.C. (March 2015). "Reconstructed Homo habilis type OH 7 suggests deep-rooted species diversity in early Homo". Nature. 519 (7541): 83–86. Bibcode:2015Natur.519...83S. doi:10.1038/nature14224. PMID 25739632. S2CID 4470282.
^Haile-Selassie Y, Gibert L, Melillo SM, Ryan TM, Alene M, Deino A, et al. (May 2015). "New species from Ethiopia further expands Middle Pliocene hominin diversity". Nature. 521 (7553): 483–8. Bibcode:2015Natur.521..483H. doi:10.1038/nature14448. PMID 26017448. S2CID 4455029.
^Foley, Robert A.; Mirazón Lahr, Marta (January 2024). "Ghosts of extinct apes: genomic insights into African hominid evolution". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2023.12.009.
^ abIndriati E, Swisher CC, Lepre C, Quinn RL, Suriyanto RA, Hascaryo AT, et al. (2011). "The age of the 20 meter Solo River terrace, Java, Indonesia and the survival of Homo erectus in Asia". PLOS One. 6 (6): e21562. Bibcode:2011PLoSO...621562I. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021562. PMC 3126814. PMID 21738710..
^Callaway, E. (7 June 2017). "Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species' history". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2017.22114. Retrieved 11 June 2017.
^Posth C, Renaud G, Mittnik A, Drucker DG, Rougier H, Cupillard C, et al. (March 2016). "Pleistocene Mitochondrial Genomes Suggest a Single Major Dispersal of Non-Africans and a Late Glacial Population Turnover in Europe". Current Biology. 26 (6): 827–33. Bibcode:2016CBio...26..827P. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.01.037. hdl:2440/114930. PMID 26853362. S2CID 140098861.
^See:
Karmin M, Saag L, Vicente M, Wilson Sayres MA, Järve M, Talas UG, et al. (April 2015). "A recent bottleneck of Y chromosome diversity coincides with a global change in culture". Genome Research. 25 (4): 459–66. doi:10.1101/gr.186684.114. PMC 4381518. PMID 25770088.
Pagani L, Lawson DJ, Jagoda E, Mörseburg A, Eriksson A, Mitt M, et al. (October 2016). "Genomic analyses inform on migration events during the peopling of Eurasia". Nature. 538 (7624): 238–242. Bibcode:2016Natur.538..238P. doi:10.1038/nature19792. PMC 5164938. PMID 27654910.
^Haber M, Jones AL, Connell BA, Arciero E, Yang H, Thomas MG, et al. (August 2019). "A Rare Deep-Rooting D0 African Y-Chromosomal Haplogroup and Its Implications for the Expansion of Modern Humans Out of Africa". Genetics. 212 (4): 1421–1428. doi:10.1534/genetics.119.302368. PMC 6707464. PMID 31196864.
^Green RE, Krause J, Briggs AW, Maricic T, Stenzel U, Kircher M, et al. (May 2010). "A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome". Science. 328 (5979): 710–722. Bibcode:2010Sci...328..710G. doi:10.1126/science.1188021. PMC 5100745. PMID 20448178.
^Lowery RK, Uribe G, Jimenez EB, Weiss MA, Herrera KJ, Regueiro M, Herrera RJ (November 2013). "Neanderthal and Denisova genetic affinities with contemporary humans: introgression versus common ancestral polymorphisms". Gene. 530 (1): 83–94. doi:10.1016/j.gene.2013.06.005. PMID 23872234.
This study raises the possibility of observed genetic affinities between archaic and modern human populations being mostly due to common ancestral polymorphisms.
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