Chapter 8 General
Dating methods that determine a date by comparing two or more materials. These do not produce a numerical age.
What is relative dating?
This hypothesis states that primate characteristics evolved so that primate ancestors could see and pick fruit.
What is the angiosperm radiation hypothesis?
The hominin group that 'Lucy' belongs to.
What is Australopithecus afarensis?
The geologic epoch that lasted from 24-5 million years ago.
What is the Miocene epoch?
The term 'hominin' refers to this characteristic.
What is bipedalism?
This geologic law/principle states that deeper strata are older than strata above and younger than strata below.
What is the Law of Superposition?
The fossil record of this epoch reveals the first true primates.
What is the Eocene epoch?
The position of this feature on the skull can help to determine whether an animal was a biped or quadruped.
What is the foramen magnum?
What is Orrorin tugenensis?
C14 dating can only be used on these types of materials.
What are organic (once living) materials?
The method of dating that measures tree-ring growth.
What is dendrochronology?
Omomyoids are likely ancestral to this group of extant primates.
What are haplorrhines?
This hypothesis proposes that bipedality evolved because it is a more efficient way of walking compared to the other apes.
What is the patchy forest hypothesis?
The approximate age of Australopithecus afarensis.
What is 3.6-3 million years old?
The group of euprimates that are thought to have evolved into the extant Strepsirrhines.
What are the adapoids?
These types of dating techniques rely on the natural, clocklike decay of unstable isotopes of an element to more stable forms.
What is radiometric dating?
This is how paleontologists believe that the ancestors of Platyrrhine monkeys got to South America.
What is crossing the ocean on a raft of vegetation?
This hypothesis states that bipedalism co-evolved with a monogamous mating system and helped to free the hands of fathers so that they could provide resources for their mate and offspring.
What is the provisioning hypothesis?
The age range of the epoch that contains the Plesiadapiforms and immediately follows the extinction of the Dinosaurs.
What is 66-56 million years ago? (The Paleocene)
The species of hominin responsible for the Laetoli Footprints in eastern Africa.
What is Australopithecus afarensis?
A dating method that would be most appropriate for establishing the age of a volcanic ash layer from an early hominin site in eastern Africa.
What is potassium/argon (or radiopotassium) dating?
Also known as the 'dental apes', these were the first true apes to be discovered from Miocene-aged fossils.
What are the Proconsulids?
Three anatomical features that differentiate gracile australopithecines from robust australopithecines,
What are large chewing muscles, large molars and large faces/prognathism?
The age range of the epoch that contains primate fossils from the Fayum Depression.
What is 34-24 million years ago? (The Oligocene)
The three species of robust australopithecine.
Australopithecus boisei
Australopithecus robustus
Australopithecus aethiopicus