ANTHROPOCURIOUS

Who was our direct evolutionary ancestor? Was it Homo heidelbergensis, like many paleoanthropologists think, or another species?

How much interbreeding occured between our species and Homo neanderthalensis?

What does the future hold for our species in an evolutionary sense?

 Will more studies of Neanderthal DNA help us identify what is unique about the modern human genome compared with our closest extinct relatives, the Neanderthals?

Is there a close correlation between climate change and the extinction of the Neanderthals, or was competition with modern humans the most important factor?

Were Neanderthals routinely symbolic (e.g. making ornamental or decorative objects, burying the dead), or did this just occur in specific populations? If the latter is the case, why did those populations exhibit these behaviors?

How did the early humans Homo Floresiensis manage to get to the island of Flores?

Was Homo erectus the direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, our own species?

Data suggest that increasing body size, greater reliance on animal food resources, and increased range size were part of a web of factors that facilitated the initial early dispersal of H. erectus from Africa. Was one of these factors more important than the others?

Did Homo erectus grow up in a more human-like pattern and rate, or a more ape-like one? Was Homo erectus the first early human species to experience an adolescent growth spurt?

Are the fossils from earlier time periods in East Africa, and from Georgia, all part of a single species (Homo erectus), regionally variable in size and shape? Or are there actually several species of early human represented by what we are now calling Homo erectus?

Was H. habilis on the evolutionary lineage that evolved into later species of Homo and even perhaps our species, Homo sapiens?

Are H. habilis and Homo rudolfensis indeed different species, or are they part of a single, variable species? Or was one the ancestor of the other?

Did H.heidelbergensis species indeed range in time from 1.3 million to 200,000 years ago, and in geography from Africa to Europe to Asia? Or are there more than one species represented among the fossils that some scientists call H. heidelbergensis (including H. antecessor, H. cepranensis, and H. rhodesiensis)?

Many scientists think this species was ancestral to our own, but which species was the ancestor of H. heidelbergensis?

The teeth and jaw of Au. afarensis are robust enough to chew hard foods, but dental microwear studies show Au. afarensis individuals ate soft foods like plants and fruit instead. While most scientists think that Au. afarensis ate hard, brittle foods during tough times when vegetation was not easily found, further microwear studies show that eating hard foods did not coincide with dry seasons of little vegetation. So how do properties of Au. afarensis teeth relate to their diet?