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Eras and Their Highlights - When Did Humans First Walk On The Face Of The Earth?
When did humans first walk on the face of the Earth?
Many paleoanthropologists (scientists who study fossil remains of ancient peoples) believe that an early human being (hominid; a primate that walked upright) appeared sometime between 10,000,000 and 4,000,000 years ago. According to the most recent theory, humans are closely related to the great apes (chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas), although scientists have not yet found a common ancestor. In 1974 American paleoanthropologist Donald C. Johanson (1943– ) discovered the partial skeleton—the skull was missing—of a female hominid at Hadar, Ethiopia. Estimated to be about 3,200,000 years old, the creature stood 3.5 feet (.94 meters) tall and, though apelike, had definitely walked upright. Paleoanthropologists consider an upright walking posture to be the first significant change that distinguished hominids from apes. Johanson gave the creature the...
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