50 Fun Facts About Human Evolution

The famous 3.2-million-year-old skeleton nicknamed Lucy was discovered in 1974 in which country?

Donald Johanson's team found her at Hadar in the Afar Triangle; locally she is called Dinkʼinesh, Amharic for 'you are marvellous'.

Lucy the fossil was named after a song by which band, played in camp the night she was found?

'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' gave a household name to a collection of several hundred bone fragments making up 40% of a skeleton.

Lucy's small skull and two-legged gait support which idea about the order of human evolution?

A 2016 study suggests her species still spent part of its time in the trees, though how much is debated.

Homo floresiensis, the 'Hobbit', was discovered in 2003 on an island of which country?

The Flores remains belong to people who stood only about 1.1 metres tall and survived until roughly 50,000 years ago.

Which island evolutionary phenomenon explains the tiny size of Homo floresiensis?

Its ancestors are thought to have reached the island around 1.27–1 million years ago; the debate is over whether they were shrunken Homo erectus or an even earlier migrant.

The first recognised Neanderthal fossil was discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley of which country?

At first it was dismissed as one of the 'lower races'; a Gibraltar skull found in 1848 was only later recognised as the same kind of human.

Roughly how long ago did Neanderthals go extinct, coinciding with the arrival of modern humans in Europe?

Neanderthals at Gibraltar may have hung on for thousands of years after the rest had vanished.

In which year was the Neanderthal genome sequence published, revealing interbreeding with modern humans?

Svante Pääbo's team later noted the mixing seems to have happened mostly between Neanderthal males and modern human females.

Roughly what share of the genome of modern humans outside Africa comes from Neanderthal ancestors?

Some Melanesian populations carry an additional 4–6% inherited from the Denisovans on top of that.

Neanderthal brain volume, about 1,640 cc for males, compares how with people alive today?

Despite the bigger brains, their brain organisation differed in regions linked to cognition and language.

In which modern country is Shanidar Cave, site of a Neanderthal grave associated with flower pollen?

Another Shanidar individual survived for years with an amputated arm, a bone infection and probable deafness, suggesting he was cared for by his group.

The Denisovans were first identified in 2010 from DNA in what kind of remains from a Siberian cave?

The Altai Mountains cave, whose average temperature sits at freezing point, preserved the DNA well enough for Svante Pääbo's team to read it.

'Denny', a first-generation hybrid found in Denisova Cave, had parents from which two groups?

Her father even carried some Neanderthal ancestry of his own, from an earlier episode of mixing in the Altai.

Who found the partial Denisovan jawbone, described in 2019, in a Tibetan Plateau cave decades earlier?

Found in 1980 in the Baishiya Karst Cave, it was the first Denisovan fossil known from outside Denisova Cave.

Which populations carry the highest share of Denisovan DNA, roughly 5% of their genome?

Filipino Negritos also carry a high proportion, pointing to interbreeding somewhere in island Southeast Asia.

Which extinct species was the first human to leave Africa, colonise Asia and Europe, and wield fire?

It spanned nearly two million years and was the first species with a humanlike body plan and gait.

Eugène Dubois first described 'Pithecanthropus erectus' in 1893 from fossils found on which island?

The Dutch scientist had joined the colonial army specifically to hunt for the 'missing link' in the East Indies.

In which year did the Peking Man fossils disappear while being moved for safekeeping?

The footlockers vanished after leaving the college on 4 December, and despite large cash rewards their fate is still unknown.

Turkana Boy, the most complete early human skeleton, was found in 1984 in which country?

The 108-bone skeleton belonged to a youth aged somewhere between 7 and 11 who lived about 1.5 million years ago.

The species name Homo habilis literally means what?

Named in 1964, it was contested for years, with many wanting it folded into Australopithecus africanus.

The Taung Child, described by Raymond Dart in 1925, was found in which country?

It was the first evidence that humanity originated in Africa, and one expert has called it the most important anthropological fossil of the 20th century.

Dart argued the Taung Child walked upright partly because which skull opening sat forward?

The skull's cranial capacity of 400–500 cc is comparable to an adult chimpanzee, yet it carried human-like features.

Which scientist's team discovered the 3.7-million-year-old Laetoli footprints in 1976?

The Tanzanian site lies 45 km south of Olduvai Gorge, and Australopithecus afarensis is the species most often credited with the tracks.

The Laetoli footprint site is in which country?

They were the oldest known evidence of hominin bipedalism when found, showing that upright walking came before big brains.

The Piltdown Man 'missing link', announced in 1912, was definitively exposed as a hoax in which year?

A 2016 review pinned the fraud on amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson, apparently seeking recognition from his peers.

The Piltdown Man forgery combined a modern human cranium with the jaw of which animal?

Franz Weidenreich had already concluded in 1923 that the teeth had been filed down, but the establishment ignored him for 30 years.

Animal remains near Ardi, the 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus skeleton, suggest she lived in what kind of environment?

That contradicted the long-held idea that walking upright first evolved out on the grasslands.

Although Ardi walked on two legs, what feature did she keep for climbing trees?

She weighed about 50 kg and stood 1.2 metres tall; her name means 'ground floor' in the Afar language.

In which country was Toumaï, the 7-million-year-old Sahelanthropus skull, discovered?

Its position on the family tree is uncertain; it may be a very early hominin or something closer to the gorilla line.

Homo naledi was discovered in 2013 in the Rising Star Cave system in which country?

The chamber yielded 1,550 specimens from at least 15 individuals, one of the richest hominin finds ever made.

Lee Berger's six 'Underground Astronauts' on the Homo naledi dig were chosen for what quality?

The Dinaledi Chamber could only be reached through extremely narrow passages that most cavers could not squeeze through.

The 'Nutcracker Man' skull found at Olduvai Gorge in 1959 belongs to which robust australopithecine?

Louis Leakey originally gave it its own genus, Zinjanthropus; the nickname came from its huge back teeth and jaws.

Homo heidelbergensis was named in 1908 from a jawbone found in a sand pit near which German city?

Otto Schoetensack described the Mauer 1 mandible, then the oldest human fossil known from Europe.

The Jebel Irhoud fossils, redated in 2017 to about 315,000 years as the oldest Homo sapiens, are from which country?

The finding suggested modern humans were spread across Africa 100,000 years earlier than the old East African origin story allowed.

The Jebel Irhoud site was discovered in 1961 while the area was being mined for which mineral?

A miner pulled a skull from the cave wall and gave it to an engineer, who kept it as a souvenir before it reached the University of Rabat.

About how many million years old are the oldest known stone tools, flakes from West Turkana in Kenya?

They are around 700,000 years older than the Ethiopian tools that previously held the record, and predate the genus Homo.

Dmanisi, home to 1.85-million-year-old Homo fossils, is in which country?

Long the earliest evidence of Homo outside Africa, the Dmanisi skulls show a surprisingly small-brained population living in the Caucasus.

In which 1871 book did Charles Darwin finally apply his theory of evolution directly to humans?

Origin of Species had only hinted that 'light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history'.

With which anatomist did Thomas Henry Huxley debate human evolution around his 1863 book Man's Place in Nature?

Even Darwin allies such as Wallace and Lyell initially doubted that natural selection could explain the human mind.

What is the popular name for the matrilineal most recent common ancestor of all living humans?

Her counterpart, traced through the male line, is called Y-chromosomal Adam; the two did not live at the same time.

Lake Toba, site of the supereruption behind the human bottleneck theory, is on which island?

The idea is that global starvation killed most humans and shaped the genetic inheritance of everyone alive today; it remains debated.

According to molecular evidence, the human lineage separated from the genus Pan (chimpanzees and bonobos) roughly how many million years ago?

Gorillas had already branched off earlier, between about 8 and 9 million years ago.

First dated to only 12,000 years ago, Homo floresiensis was later re-dated to about how many years ago?

Earlier remains from Mata Menge on the same island date to around 700,000 years ago.

Homo naledi's brain was only 465–610 cc despite living 335,000–236,000 years ago. What is the modern human range?

Its persistence alongside big-brained contemporaries challenged the assumption that a larger brain is always an advantage.

Neanderthal DNA shows variants for which hair colour in some individuals, though it was apparently not common?

Popular reconstructions often give every Neanderthal ginger hair, which overstates what the genetics actually show.

Which 18th-century naturalist originally chose the species name Homo sapiens?

He and his contemporaries already considered the great apes our closest relatives on anatomical grounds, a century before Darwin.

Homo heidelbergensis is often seen as the last common ancestor of modern humans and which two groups?

The species is so loosely defined that palaeoanthropologists call the Middle Pleistocene the 'muddle in the middle'.

Which innovation does Richard Wrangham argue was the key adaptation separating Homo from australopithecines?

Cooking released more nutrition, which he links to smaller guts and teeth and our 'horrendously fuel-inefficient' brains.

Under the recent African origin theory, roughly when did modern humans migrate out of Africa?

They gradually replaced local populations of earlier humans, having possibly evolved from Homo heidelbergensis, H. rhodesiensis or H. antecessor.

Orrorin tugenensis, an early candidate for the human lineage, dates to roughly how long ago?

It sits between the 7-million-year-old Sahelanthropus and Ardipithecus, which spans about 5.5 to 4.4 million years ago.