Primates and Humans

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts related to primates and human evolution.

Primates

The mammalian order that includes lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes, characterized by adaptations for life in trees.

Grasping Hands and Feet

Highly flexible digits allowing for grasping and manipulating objects, crucial for climbing and tool use.

Flexible Limbs

Limbs that enable both arboreal and terrestrial movement, with ball-and-socket joints for a wide range of motion.

Binocular Vision

Vision that provides overlapping fields of sight for depth perception, essential in judging distances.

Bipedalism

The ability to walk on two legs as the primary mode of locomotion, unique to humans among primates.

Cultural Transmission

The process through which information and skills are passed from one generation to the next, observed in many primate species.

Hominins

The group that includes modern humans and our extinct relatives, sharing a common ancestor with great apes.

Australopiths

A paraphyletic group of early hominins that lived between 4 and 2 million years ago, showing evidence of bipedalism.

Homo sapiens

The species of modern humans, characterized by larger brains and advanced tool use, believed to have originated in Africa.

Out-of-Africa Migration

The dispersal of modern humans from Africa into other parts of the world, occurring less than 200,000 years ago.