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| Evolution above the species level |
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| The process of forming new species |
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| Speciation through a branch mechanism whereby an ancestral population gives rise to two or more descendant populations |
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| A sustained directional shift in a population's average characteristics |
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| A model of macroevolutionary change that suggests evolution occurs via long periods of stability or stasis punctuated by periods of rapid change |
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| According to the theory of plate tectonics, the movement of continents embedded in underlying plates on the earth's surface in relation to one another over the history of life on earth |
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| A special form of locomotion on two feet found in humans and their ancestors |
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| The genus including several species of early bipeds from southern and eastern Africa living between about 1.1 and 4.3 mya, one of whom was directly ancestral to humans |
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| Robust Australopithecines |
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| Several species within the genus Australopithecus who lived from 1.1 to 2.5 mya in the eastern and southern Africa; known for the rugged nature of their chewing apparatus (large back teeth, large chewing muscles, and bony ridge on their skull tops for the insertion of these large muscles |
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| Gracile Australopithecines |
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| Member of the genus Australopithecus possessing a more lightly built chewing apparatus; likely had a diet that included more meat than that of the robust australopithecines |
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| The first stone tool industry beginning between 2.5 & 2.6 mya |
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| Old Stone Age beginning with the earliest Oldowan tools spanning from about 200,000 or 250,000 to 2.6 mya |
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"Handy man"
The first fossil member of the genus Homo appearing 2.5 mya, with larger brains and smaller faces than australopithecines |
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"Upright man"
A species within the genus Homo, first appearing just after 2 mya in Africa and ultimately spreading throughout the Old World |
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| A distinct group within the genus Homo inhabiting Europe and Southwest Asia from approximately 30,000 to 125,000 ya |
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| The tool industry of the Neandertals and their contemporaries of Europe, Southwest Asia & northern Africa from 40,000 to 125,000 ya |
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| The last part (10,000 - 40,000 ya) of the Old Stone Age, featuring tool industries characterized by long slim blades and an explosion of creative symbolic forms |
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| The hypothesis that modern humans originated through a process of simultaneous location transition form Homo erectus to Homo sapiens throughout the inhabited world |
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| Recent African Origins Hypothesis |
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Definition
The hypothesis that all modern people and derived from one single population of archaic Homo sapiens from Africa who migrated out of Africa after 100,000 ya, replacing all other archaic forms due to their superior culture capabilities
a.d.a. the Eve or out of Africa hypothesis |
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