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Paleoanthropology: Pliocene and Pleistocene human evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Eric Delson
Eric Delson*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, Lehman College (C.U.N.Y.), Bronx, N.Y., 10486 and Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024
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Modern paleoanthropology is broadly interdisciplinary, integrating the results of studies in hominid (or more generally primate) paleontology, morphology and systematics with archeology, stratigraphy, chronometry, general paleontology, taphonomy and ecology, among other fields. (I here employ the term “hominid” to include all advanced hominoids of Miocene to Pleistocene age, following Delson and Andrews, 1975; similarly “hominine” (or “human”) refers to members of the subfamily Homininae of this usage, especially Australopithecus and Homo. Many other authors restrict hominine/human to Homo alone, employing hominid where I use hominine.) This integrative approach has been both spectacular and successful in eastern Africa (see Laporte 1980), due to the influence of F. C. Howell, the Leakeys and their colleagues, but it has also been responsible for recent advances in other temporal and spatial intervals in human evolution. In this review, I will concentrate on the morpho-evolutionary aspects of recent paleoanthropological studies, indicating major sources and new developments. Most fossils not otherwise referenced are discussed, albeit often with a different interpretation, in Wolpoff's (1980a) text.

Type
Current Happenings
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Summer 1981 , pp. 298 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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