These divergent branches of the human family tree are what I find most fascinating about human evolution. Modern great apes are known to copy human behaviours when in close proximity, I wonder if they did the same, and vice versa. Maybe the first individual to figure out how to make stone blades wasn’t one of our ancestors, but someone we copied.
@@TheMaury101 Indeed. Also, at least one population of chimpanzees has learned to use stone tools as well, though not to the same degree as our ancestors.
Also around 3 million years ago in Africa were giant relatives of modern sea otters, which use stone “hammers” to get into shellfish. If their extinct cousins did as well, then we might have picked up some ideas by watching them as well, though that’s highly speculative.
I like that you explained how the paleontologists came to their conclusions because so often people say "Research suggests that these animals did this and that" but I usually have no idea how they came to that conclusion!
If you haven't already, I'd love to see an episode about the "water people" who mostly hunt under water, and live in huts on stilts above the water. They're present day humans who can dive lower (with only the help of large rocks to weigh them down) and stay under the water longer (with no breathing apparatuses) than the humans of the rest of the world. If I recall, they've even evolved to have a larger spleen than the rest of us... and that's about all I can remember lol
Aquatic Apes did a video on them, and found that while some of them may still have those capabilities, most rely on modern technology because it's still easier and more reliable to feed their families and earn a living. Haven't watched any other videos though, it's possible the situation may be broader than that :)
@@druggeddragon420Not really, a child in Africa back then had little use for teeth aside being a trinket while 5 chocolate bars would have been extremely expensive and rare so he got some real, if temporary, value from it. The teeth would definitely have been lost to time if the boy kept them.
At least the kid got something he wanted! And it's only a career -changing, ever-changing discovery AFTER the work is done: before that, it was a kid's "thing".
@@sadderwhiskeymannhonestly, he should credit the child with his discovery at least ensure that the child's name isn't lost to the colonial backlog of history!
I always wonder how many species were wiped out quickly by a single disease rather than slow loss of habitat. That saiga antelope incident was proof of how bad one outbreak could be.
The examples you give are largely of introduced pathogens, moved around the planet by humans. If a species evolves in the presence of a given pathogen it will rarely lead to extinction. Think smallpox and humans. Malaria and humans. They have been with us for millennia, and are a problem. But they don't lead to extinction.
100%! My day gets completely positively turned around whenever a new one is released. I know with how much I rewatch them in going to get hours of enjoyment and learning about my favourite hobby from every video.
I was taught in uni that the best way to avoid extinction is to occupy as much land as possible. This is even more important than genetic diversity, or adaptability. It's probability - the bigger the territory, the more likely some holdouts will survive any catastrophe, no matter how deadly it is. And that REALLY HAPPENED to Homo Sapiens during the Toba eruption, which almost wiped us out. I think about this when we talk about extinct hominid species. They might have been poorly adapted to changing world, but it's also possible that they just had a few bad dice rolls.
The first part of your argument is very interesting. Thanks for sharing it. However, I’ve read that that many anthropologists and paleontologists are skeptical about the Toba eruption bottleneck hypothesis. For example, they have found remains of human populations that were completely unaffected by the eruption. Here’s what I found on the BBC website: “In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals. “An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe. “It could find none.” My understanding is that most scientists reject it now.
Maybe that is why colonialism and expansionist tactics are so common amongst human societal groups. The need to take up space and spread out is baked into us because those who did so survived more often. This is also why I am not convinced by the arguments that climate change will cause the extinction of humanity. People point out how many current population centres may become uninhabitable, but those are not the ONLY population centres. And besides which, we have examples of areas like Doggerland where the environment did change and the area evolved from low plains to marshes to outright flooded. There are Dreamtime recollections of Aboriginal Australians describing the coastline of the landmass changing and significant portions becoming flooded withing a single lifetime. I think these usually line up with the end of one of the last ice ages. In such cases and the people who lived there were not destroyed, they adapted and moved. On a global scale, the worst of the projections may be problematic and knock us back a few centuries, but it won't lead to our extinction.
A counter argument to the one presented in the video about human ancestors becoming generalists is embodied in the question "Why are there no bears in Africa?" One answer is that Africa is filled with many specialist species occupying so many niches that a generalist like the bear could not compete.
It's kind of freeing to learn that we really aren't special, our "intelligence" is just a random adaptation that could have never appeared, and the world would keep spinning
@@ROBERTGOTSCHALL-j8ubut we ARE the neanderthal. Everyone of eurasian descent contains 1-8% neanderthal DNA in their genome. They are our ancestors too.
I comment this on a lot of videos in hopes of it being seen, but I discovered this channel in high school, and it absolutely captivated me. I largely credit this content, and the people behind it for showing me the amazing world of evolution, and most importantly, anthropology. I am now an anthropology major who spends her free time auditing ANTH. Lectures I cannot afford (both in finance, and just in my class schedule lol) and my excitement towards the subject grows by the day, and I am just so excited to make my on]win contributions to this study. Thank you all!!!!
I've heard someone hypothesise that stone tools were an instinctual behaviour in early homonins like building nests is to birds. This video offers evidence of that.
@@eamonahern7495 *hominin How can an object be a behaviour? If someone finds my bones next to a computer 10'000 years from now, is that evidence that computers were instinctual behaviour? Did you instinctually build a computer? Or tools for that matter?
Some groups of chimpanzees use favorite rocks to split open tough gourds. They teach the technique to their young, being very picky about the rock size. Sticks are stripped of branches to dip into ant hills. Its not that far from altering rocks.
I feel like the situation where they may have filled a niche that no longer exists, so we can't understand them might happen more than we realize. How many paleontological mysteries will never be solved because of that?
@@lukescholz1 our ability to analyze DNA is already starting to highlight several "ghost species"; species of hominin that look like they probably existed but for whom we have no fossil evidence. What we really need now is some breakthrough on our ability to find fossils.
@@extramurous The problem with locating fossils in general, is that fossilization is already a one in billion chance. The vast percentage of species went extinct and left no remains behind for us to find in the first place, if they're in a place we can even reach at all.
And I wonder if by mostly restricting our diet to a few plants (e.g., rice, wheat, maize) and animals (e.g., chicken, pigs, cows) we have become too specialized.
It’s a basic tenant of evolution. Specialists outcompete generalists in stable environments but go extinct at higher rates during times of change. Stable, complex environments like rainforests or coral reefs are hyper diverse because of a jillion specialist species.
If their diet was similar of that of gorillas, they would drink very little water, compared to other hominids. If your water needs are satisfied almost exclusively by your diet, and you eat things like roots, you are more likely to die of dehydration in a longer drought, since you would take longer to notice the changing environment and move.
Gorillas are more adapted to jungle plants, which tends to be more nutritious, compared to the savanna plants that bosei was adapted to eat (big teeth and strong muscles) - even if their preferred food was apparently bulbs and roots. It's a rather peculiar specialization and it shows that they were already slowly adapting to a change in diet when they went extinct. So it's likely that they went through at least two adaptation events (with the second one being fatal).
Absolutely fascinating video I've been looking forwards to, remember hearing the name Paranthropus thrown around but I had no idea they were a completely parallel lineage of hominins that evolved in this different a direction than our own evolutionary ancestors did. Makes me wonder how different life on Earth would look like today if a few things had gone differently.
I learned about the Leakey's work in east Africa well over 50 years ago, probably through a National Geographic show on television, and the magazine itself. At the time of the television special, Paranthropus boisei was called Zinjanthropus boisei. To a grade school kid, that was such a cool name, that I've always been able to remember it.
Honestly giving the kid who didn't understand the gravity of the situation chocolate bars instead of actual compensation is Honestly kind of depressing
I mean, what else would you expect? The kid was obviously not able to do anything with the fossil. If he didn't exchange it for chocolate it would have most likely been lost to science.
I wonder why we consider tool use to be unlikely in these hominids. Many species use tools, some do a little manufacturing. I think it stems from a period in time when we perceived ourselves as superior and distinct from the other species on the planet. Our primary contribution is the Anthropocene.
Differently from other animals and birds who make and use tools, we humans are developing and diversifying our tools. While other animals used and are using tools specifically and temporary, we humans were and are using them systematically. Simpler put, animals abandon their tools after use, we are keeping them and make them even better. 🙂
@@AlexandruBurdaI've literally seen crows make different adjustments to wire to fit the job. Yeah, lots of animals don't keep tools, but it wasn't until relatively recently that our ancestors even did that. Tho there is some evidence that as far back as Australopithecus (Iirc) did leave tools where they were... Bc they had made a sort of factory with anvils for making the tools.
that’s true, but we also have to think about what the tools might have been made out of. if hominids like paranthropus mainly ate softer plants as described in the video, they may not have had as much need for tools made out of stone. tools made up of wood or the like wouldn’t last long enough to be discovered by us today the way stone tools are. then there’s the fact that barely any evidence of that time period has managed to be preserved well enough for us to recover it, just thinking of the number of individuals who must have existed vs the few fossilized remains we’ve found. like our sample size of evidence is truly minuscule. 😭 it’s hard to draw any conclusions from it!
This is like learning about an old friend: I first heard of the first species as, "Australopithecus Robustus," when I was in elementary school, (presumably from less acccurate textbooks), and always thought it an interesting figure.
I think the name has gone through lumping and splitting over the decades since at least the 50s. Not sure if even today some might not call it just a junior synonym to Australopithecus.
Yeah, it’s definitely a matter of lumping or splitting. I took a Biological Anthropology class last year and one of our exam essay questions was arguing for putting these guys down as Paranthropus or Australopithecus. Personally, I remember thinking that there really wasn’t enough evidence to differentiate between the two (at least enough to create different genuses).
6:55 You know, I've been following this stuff since the 1960s, the breakthroughs in evidence recognition, collecting, researching and discovery is mind boggling. Paleo landscape reconstructions, habitat distribution, ... Very Cool demonstration. Thanks. Although that ending disappointed, we people are very much in the driver's seat when it comes to changing Earth.
When I took a course on paleoanthropology in college, P. robustus and P. boisei fascinated me. They're still my favorite hominins (present company excepted, of course).
I’m so thankful for how lucky Homo sapiens are, but I believe it took more than just luck. All those geological changes that took place must’ve revealed what our ancestors were really made of
I've actually been talking about this quite a bit recently with my 7 year old! Super excited to see you guys talking about it, she's going to love this!
Most likely. I was watching something the other day about herpes evolution in the primate and human predecessors. There’s evidence to suggest it spread to one of our ancestors through the act of eating another member of a distinctly related lineage. Sure it could’ve potentially been through sexual contact, but it would’ve been more likely to get through an open wound. Ie fighting/hunting/butchering and getting infected blood in the wounds. Sexual contact would have to imply there was active sores and microtears or worse on the opposing side during the act. There’s also evidence we butchered and ate Neanderthals and vice versa, and we looked and acted VERY similarly-to the point mixed multi-generational family groups developed. You’ll eat anything when you’re hungry enough, and it would come down to physical vs intellectual advantages for who may have hunted who.
Humans sometimes eat other apes and on occasion even modern humans have eaten other humans, so I think it's quite likely they preyed on paranthropus at least a few times.
Fascinating how so much information can be gleaned from a few teeth & skulls! Paleontologists truly are the unsung forensic analysts of the scientific world!
The survival of the fittest - coined by Herbert Spencer, not - as widely believed - Charles Darwin, Darwin actually hated Spencer because he believed in determinism. For Darwin, evolution was not deterministic but fortuitous.
Does Paranthropus show any signs of being omnivorous? If not, that could explain why our ancestors survived but theirs did not. If they were only herbivores, then our ancestors would have had more potential food available and make us a bit more "extinction proof", so to speak.
i was chanting paranthropus lol. i was pretty sure that's the genus you were talking about, but i was so excited when you said it. i love this genus. does it make sense to say that i miss the extinct apes; can you miss a species you've never met? (especially homo erectus and h. sapiens neanderthalensis, but).
If you could please have the sound engineer remove that weird vibrating noise in the background of the entire video and please refrain from using it on future videos. It makes it hard to focus on the content, thank you. Love your videos!
Brilliant. This is one of the best reasons as to why, exactly, we have both science and speculative (science) fiction. Rock on, dudes. Please cover both Great Kropotkin and Iain M Banks. And even crochety old, much missed, Terry Prachett. It's all relevant and related, trust me...
I was under the impression that a vital part of our ancestors’ evolutionary brain development was the incorporation of meat into their diets, because cognitive processes are so calorically expensive. If these hominids weren’t able (or willing) to branch out to meat, I feel like that possibly could have played a significant role in their inability to last.
Interesting take on the stone tools. He says that because of the overlap in species at many sites, we can't tell who the tools belonged to, while omitting the 2.9 million year old Oldewan tool site at Kanjera South, Kenya where the only hominin fossils were Paranthropus teeth. In the words of the researchers "While we can't demonstrate Paranthropus actually made these tools, this species is so far the only suspect at the scene of the crime."
I'm just being to learn about our ancestors and I had heard their name here and there while watching other videos on the subject but now I know so much more! This was really fascinating.
I feel like everyone asking the "what if X went differently" questions should really take on speculative evolution as a hobby. Lots of projects already in the works exploring potential evolutionary paths for earth life, which are fun to read as well as contribute to.
I get why you might not want to broach the subject in the main video, but is there any thought that those stone tools at the Paranthropus site might have been weapons that other Hominin's might have used against them?
Very interesting! The older we get in our lineage, the more we're finding out how we became the sole hominid species. And bring back the jokes. They are far better than trivia in my humble opinion.😊😊😊
The artist's rendering of the male with the ken doll bump instead of genetalia has me wondering (and laughing at) what his junk actually looked like. ..further proof that boys don't grow up, we just get bigger, lol.
Maybe the question we really should be asking ourselves is not why ours numerous relatives are extinct, but why we aren't? Perhaps the hominids were a dead-end species, one that shouldn't have survived (meaning: the direction of our evolution relied upon specific conditions that ceased soon before the extinction of our relatives), but homo sapiens evolved something unique and ground breaking enough to escape the extinction of the hominids? Food for thought.
i have alway suspected that the reason for the 'uncanny valley' is because we competed with and feared other sapient species in our deep/lost past, and that they either died out naturally, or we eliminated them, but carry that instinctual fear of other sapients.
Awesome video! Is there a possibility that the tools found with Paranthropus be from another hominid species (such as ancestral Neanderthals) consuming Paranthropus?
there have been tools found in multiple locations with Paranthropus remains, some without any other hominid remains. By that time our lineage hadn’t yet diverged from Neanderthals.
Neanderthals are completely impossible because they evolved in Europe around 450k years ago, while P. bosei is from 2.4 to 1.2 millions years ago and only found in the southern parts of Africa. But yes, it's been hypothesized that the stone tools were made by H. erectus. The thing however is that lithic technology is dated to 3.3 millions years ago anyway (with Kenyanthropus, and before the first Homo) so there's no reason to assume that Paranthropus couldn't do it. In fact it wouldn't be too surprising to discover that the only reason why modern apes don't also have a proper lithic industry is simply because they don't need it.
On one hand, our direct ancestors survived because they weren't picky, on the other, we've evolved into the single most planet-bustingly demanding animal that ever lived. 🤔
Here’s a cool idea for a future video, exploring the Artifacts of ancient Europeans during the Wurm glaciation, like the fertility goddess’s or the mammoth tents
These divergent branches of the human family tree are what I find most fascinating about human evolution. Modern great apes are known to copy human behaviours when in close proximity, I wonder if they did the same, and vice versa. Maybe the first individual to figure out how to make stone blades wasn’t one of our ancestors, but someone we copied.
That rings true, on a deep level.
I mean aren’t the oldest known stone tools like 3 million years old? That might be exactly how we learned to make tools
@@TheMaury101 Indeed. Also, at least one population of chimpanzees has learned to use stone tools as well, though not to the same degree as our ancestors.
Also around 3 million years ago in Africa were giant relatives of modern sea otters, which use stone “hammers” to get into shellfish. If their extinct cousins did as well, then we might have picked up some ideas by watching them as well, though that’s highly speculative.
Oh absolutely. Homo and other species probably influenced each other and we have a ton to thank those ancient extinct species for. I completely agree.
I like that you explained how the paleontologists came to their conclusions because so often people say "Research suggests that these animals did this and that" but I usually have no idea how they came to that conclusion!
Oh look, you're pretend learning!
oh look, you're bitter cause people want to know more! @@mercster
"Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about it." 😮🤣🤣🤣
Yeah, now I think he's pretty much committed to producing that episode.
haha. Exactly
I just want to know where to send the bottles of liquor to him.
If you haven't already, I'd love to see an episode about the "water people" who mostly hunt under water, and live in huts on stilts above the water. They're present day humans who can dive lower (with only the help of large rocks to weigh them down) and stay under the water longer (with no breathing apparatuses) than the humans of the rest of the world. If I recall, they've even evolved to have a larger spleen than the rest of us... and that's about all I can remember lol
I think sicshow did an episode on them
They’re called the Bajau people !
@@vzl3ntin thank you!
Aquatic Apes did a video on them, and found that while some of them may still have those capabilities, most rely on modern technology because it's still easier and more reliable to feed their families and earn a living. Haven't watched any other videos though, it's possible the situation may be broader than that :)
There are reports in antiquity of pearl divers who could stay underwater for 45 minutes or even longer than an hour
I'd happily pay 5 chocolate bars for a career making discovery like that
I was thinking about that part, and it seems to me that he did that kid dirty. He could at least give some cash to his family.
@@sadderwhiskeymann nah fr 😂 it’s so messed up if think about it
@@druggeddragon420Not really, a child in Africa back then had little use for teeth aside being a trinket while 5 chocolate bars would have been extremely expensive and rare so he got some real, if temporary, value from it. The teeth would definitely have been lost to time if the boy kept them.
At least the kid got something he wanted!
And it's only a career -changing, ever-changing discovery AFTER the work is done: before that, it was a kid's "thing".
@@sadderwhiskeymannhonestly, he should credit the child with his discovery at least ensure that the child's name isn't lost to the colonial backlog of history!
I always wonder how many species were wiped out quickly by a single disease rather than slow loss of habitat. That saiga antelope incident was proof of how bad one outbreak could be.
100% herd mortality but did not go extinct it seems. gnarly though
Amphibians too. I think it's smthn like 200 species of toads alone go extinct each day
We lost the gastric-brooding frog due to a fungus.
The examples you give are largely of introduced pathogens, moved around the planet by humans.
If a species evolves in the presence of a given pathogen it will rarely lead to extinction.
Think smallpox and humans. Malaria and humans.
They have been with us for millennia, and are a problem.
But they don't lead to extinction.
@@StonedtotheBones13 Amphibians are especially vulnerable to climate change
New PBS Eons video = happy
100%! My day gets completely positively turned around whenever a new one is released. I know with how much I rewatch them in going to get hours of enjoyment and learning about my favourite hobby from every video.
fr
I was taught in uni that the best way to avoid extinction is to occupy as much land as possible. This is even more important than genetic diversity, or adaptability. It's probability - the bigger the territory, the more likely some holdouts will survive any catastrophe, no matter how deadly it is. And that REALLY HAPPENED to Homo Sapiens during the Toba eruption, which almost wiped us out.
I think about this when we talk about extinct hominid species. They might have been poorly adapted to changing world, but it's also possible that they just had a few bad dice rolls.
The first part of your argument is very interesting. Thanks for sharing it. However, I’ve read that that many anthropologists and paleontologists are skeptical about the Toba eruption bottleneck hypothesis. For example, they have found remains of human populations that were completely unaffected by the eruption. Here’s what I found on the BBC website:
“In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals.
“An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe.
“It could find none.”
My understanding is that most scientists reject it now.
@@bbartky Thanks for the insight.
Maybe that is why colonialism and expansionist tactics are so common amongst human societal groups. The need to take up space and spread out is baked into us because those who did so survived more often. This is also why I am not convinced by the arguments that climate change will cause the extinction of humanity. People point out how many current population centres may become uninhabitable, but those are not the ONLY population centres. And besides which, we have examples of areas like Doggerland where the environment did change and the area evolved from low plains to marshes to outright flooded. There are Dreamtime recollections of Aboriginal Australians describing the coastline of the landmass changing and significant portions becoming flooded withing a single lifetime. I think these usually line up with the end of one of the last ice ages. In such cases and the people who lived there were not destroyed, they adapted and moved. On a global scale, the worst of the projections may be problematic and knock us back a few centuries, but it won't lead to our extinction.
A counter argument to the one presented in the video about human ancestors becoming generalists is embodied in the question "Why are there no bears in Africa?" One answer is that Africa is filled with many specialist species occupying so many niches that a generalist like the bear could not compete.
Humans are surprisingly practical creatures, if bugs were bigger, we'd be eating a lot more bugs.
In my culture it seemed as weird. But if I grew up in a culture that you know eight bugs and stuff like that It wouldn't seem very weird
See evidence: Lobster
Shrimp is bugs
Bug is bugs @@Croakin
Crustaceans are essentially aquatic bugs, so you're not wrong.
The more I learn about humans, the more I realise we almost didn't "happen" as a species and it's honestly amazing we're here now.
It's kind of freeing to learn that we really aren't special, our "intelligence" is just a random adaptation that could have never appeared, and the world would keep spinning
We are not better than Neanderthal, just luckier.
@@ROBERTGOTSCHALL-j8u Prettier
@@ROBERTGOTSCHALL-j8ubut we ARE the neanderthal. Everyone of eurasian descent contains 1-8% neanderthal DNA in their genome. They are our ancestors too.
Ever wonder if all this happened over billions of years where are the millions of fossils transitory life forms?
“C4 plants”
Me: hehe, do they…
“C4 don’t actually explode”
Me:.. oh, never mind
😅
Same 😂
They really know their audience 😂
Someone didn’t pay attention during their high school chemistry classes 😂
That’s what I was thinking😂
I comment this on a lot of videos in hopes of it being seen, but I discovered this channel in high school, and it absolutely captivated me. I largely credit this content, and the people behind it for showing me the amazing world of evolution, and most importantly, anthropology. I am now an anthropology major who spends her free time auditing ANTH. Lectures I cannot afford (both in finance, and just in my class schedule lol) and my excitement towards the subject grows by the day, and I am just so excited to make my on]win contributions to this study. Thank you all!!!!
I’ve often wished I could take a “train ride through time” (observing only) and watch evolution take place, similar to the movie Lucy.
Be a cool Magic train ride
I would give up everything for that, literally
Dinosaur Train 😎
I dream about this. I just want to see what was going on in dee history
There's a new great documentary out with Morgan Freeman narrating called Life on Our Planet
As a former combat engineer, i cannot express how disappointed I am to learn C4 plants don't explode.
Lol
And it's also waaay slower than a C3 corvette
That's just what they want you to believe.
If they did explode I would at least hope they're as stable as C4 and not like TNT or nitroglycerin
C4 plants are flammable, and I have heard that the other C4 is also flammable (separate from exploding).
Literally NOTHING makes my day more than seeing that a new Eons video is out. You folks ROCK.
I've heard someone hypothesise that stone tools were an instinctual behaviour in early homonins like building nests is to birds. This video offers evidence of that.
@eamonahern7495 - What evidence was offered? I fail to find it.
@@MossyMozart the part where he talks about stone tools being found on sites near the fossil remains of those homonins
@@eamonahern7495 *hominin
How can an object be a behaviour?
If someone finds my bones next to a computer 10'000 years from now, is that evidence that computers were instinctual behaviour? Did you instinctually build a computer? Or tools for that matter?
Some groups of chimpanzees use favorite rocks to split open tough gourds. They teach the technique to their young, being very picky about the rock size. Sticks are stripped of branches to dip into ant hills. Its not that far from altering rocks.
@dasstigma "offers evidence of that"
My favorite of the PBS presenters, with a topic of particular interest. Thank you for making my day!
Thank you so much for making this content Eons, my day gets completely positively turned around whenever a new video is released. So thank you Eons
I feel like the situation where they may have filled a niche that no longer exists, so we can't understand them might happen more than we realize. How many paleontological mysteries will never be solved because of that?
Too many! I'm curious how our technology will advance to aid in discovering those mysteries
@@lukescholz1 our ability to analyze DNA is already starting to highlight several "ghost species"; species of hominin that look like they probably existed but for whom we have no fossil evidence. What we really need now is some breakthrough on our ability to find fossils.
@@extramurous The problem with locating fossils in general, is that fossilization is already a one in billion chance. The vast percentage of species went extinct and left no remains behind for us to find in the first place, if they're in a place we can even reach at all.
Exciting to think about.
Furthermore the niche they filled that disappeared may have again come to exist yet they did not, having no bridging mechanic through time and space.
Awesome, content!!!! Awesome!!!
Popcorn is a C4 plant. Technically, it could explode.
best comment!
11:04 They are officially called "pomalky" (lit. slowly moving) in Slovak language. "Želvušky" in Czech, which means "little turtles".
In Hungarian they are called 'medveállatka' meaning 'little bear-animal'
tihohodki in russian
"Specialist are more likely to go extinct than generalist" is gonna make my day 😅
Yes, then the generalist expand into 'specialized' niches that then puts them at risk for extinction when the environment changes :)
And I wonder if by mostly restricting our diet to a few plants (e.g., rice, wheat, maize) and animals (e.g., chicken, pigs, cows) we have become too specialized.
It’s a basic tenant of evolution. Specialists outcompete generalists in stable environments but go extinct at higher rates during times of change. Stable, complex environments like rainforests or coral reefs are hyper diverse because of a jillion specialist species.
... if that's all you think people eat then yeah I guess we are specialists.@caiop.4972
@@Snailz5 It's usually true, but it's not always true.
I’ve been itching for another human evolution adjacent video on the channel!!!
They have a bony crests on their skulls so we jokingly call them Klingons.
“And for the record, C4 plants don’t actually explode”
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined
Why would your day be ruined? I hope you get the help you need
@@mcgritty8842It's a meme, lol.
If their diet was similar of that of gorillas, they would drink very little water, compared to other hominids. If your water needs are satisfied almost exclusively by your diet, and you eat things like roots, you are more likely to die of dehydration in a longer drought, since you would take longer to notice the changing environment and move.
Gorillas are more adapted to jungle plants, which tends to be more nutritious, compared to the savanna plants that bosei was adapted to eat (big teeth and strong muscles) - even if their preferred food was apparently bulbs and roots. It's a rather peculiar specialization and it shows that they were already slowly adapting to a change in diet when they went extinct. So it's likely that they went through at least two adaptation events (with the second one being fatal).
Absolutely fascinating video I've been looking forwards to, remember hearing the name Paranthropus thrown around but I had no idea they were a completely parallel lineage of hominins that evolved in this different a direction than our own evolutionary ancestors did. Makes me wonder how different life on Earth would look like today if a few things had gone differently.
5:32 I always appreciate the humor you folks put in these videos😉.
I learned about the Leakey's work in east Africa well over 50 years ago, probably through a National Geographic show on television, and the magazine itself. At the time of the television special, Paranthropus boisei was called Zinjanthropus boisei. To a grade school kid, that was such a cool name, that I've always been able to remember it.
11:32 11:32
One of the best videos! Paleontology, ecology and evolution ❤ Beautiful!
Doubt + Curiosity = SCIENCE. Thanks for this video.
Wow 1:16 worst deal ever, 5 chocolate bars for the Paranthropus teeth 🥲
nah. south africa itself is full of worse deals. "hey natives, give us your land or be murdered" is a much worse deal.
Yeah, those teeth were worth at LEAST ten chocolate bars!
Thank you Blake for answering the question on my mind (about the C4 plants explosive potential or lack thereof).
How did you know?
He "fore saw" the question😊
The grass may have gone kaboom... 😊
he prolly asked the same question when he first heard about it
Honestly giving the kid who didn't understand the gravity of the situation chocolate bars instead of actual compensation is Honestly kind of depressing
Mmmmmmm…. Chocolate!
I mean, what else would you expect? The kid was obviously not able to do anything with the fossil. If he didn't exchange it for chocolate it would have most likely been lost to science.
@Ezullof ...Money? Any kind of proper reward at all that could effectively do lasting positive change, rather than candy?
I wonder why we consider tool use to be unlikely in these hominids. Many species use tools, some do a little manufacturing. I think it stems from a period in time when we perceived ourselves as superior and distinct from the other species on the planet. Our primary contribution is the Anthropocene.
Well, stone tools are what are specifically being talked about here. Considering all great apes use tools, all hominins must have used tools as well.
Differently from other animals and birds who make and use tools, we humans are developing and diversifying our tools.
While other animals used and are using tools specifically and temporary, we humans were and are using them systematically.
Simpler put, animals abandon their tools after use, we are keeping them and make them even better. 🙂
Yeah, I don't think that's a thing of the past.
@@AlexandruBurdaI've literally seen crows make different adjustments to wire to fit the job. Yeah, lots of animals don't keep tools, but it wasn't until relatively recently that our ancestors even did that. Tho there is some evidence that as far back as Australopithecus (Iirc) did leave tools where they were... Bc they had made a sort of factory with anvils for making the tools.
that’s true, but we also have to think about what the tools might have been made out of. if hominids like paranthropus mainly ate softer plants as described in the video, they may not have had as much need for tools made out of stone. tools made up of wood or the like wouldn’t last long enough to be discovered by us today the way stone tools are. then there’s the fact that barely any evidence of that time period has managed to be preserved well enough for us to recover it, just thinking of the number of individuals who must have existed vs the few fossilized remains we’ve found. like our sample size of evidence is truly minuscule. 😭 it’s hard to draw any conclusions from it!
Fascinating. Excellent programming - Thank you PBS!
This is like learning about an old friend: I first heard of the first species as, "Australopithecus Robustus," when I was in elementary school, (presumably from less acccurate textbooks), and always thought it an interesting figure.
I think the name has gone through lumping and splitting over the decades since at least the 50s. Not sure if even today some might not call it just a junior synonym to Australopithecus.
Yeah, it’s definitely a matter of lumping or splitting. I took a Biological Anthropology class last year and one of our exam essay questions was arguing for putting these guys down as Paranthropus or Australopithecus.
Personally, I remember thinking that there really wasn’t enough evidence to differentiate between the two (at least enough to create different genuses).
6:55 You know, I've been following this stuff since the 1960s, the breakthroughs in evidence recognition, collecting, researching and discovery is mind boggling. Paleo landscape reconstructions, habitat distribution, ... Very Cool demonstration. Thanks.
Although that ending disappointed, we people are very much in the driver's seat when it comes to changing Earth.
I completely agree with the host. No big bugs!
When I took a course on paleoanthropology in college, P. robustus and P. boisei fascinated me. They're still my favorite hominins (present company excepted, of course).
I’m so thankful for how lucky Homo sapiens are, but I believe it took more than just luck. All those geological changes that took place must’ve revealed what our ancestors were really made of
If you go as far back as the hyperboreans they reproduced by budding.
I love the music. What's the music playing in the background? The more electronicy sorta stuff at about 8:00. So relaxing.
Great video BTW.
"Cutting edge technology" 🙂 you're too cute! Happy for a new video on my favorite subject!
these vids always make my day when they drop
I was literally wondering if there would eventually be an episode about Paranthropus just this morning!
I've actually been talking about this quite a bit recently with my 7 year old! Super excited to see you guys talking about it, she's going to love this!
Sounds like a great bigfoot candidate to me!
I love this episode so much because of the witty jokes; c4 explosive food, cutting edge technology, etc. Thanks for making it interesting.
Forever after this moment. Tardigrades shall be known as, "Snoots I wanna Boop." 😊
Blake's fits just get crisper with every video 👌
Makes me wonder if early humans ever hunted and ate their paranthropoid cousins.
Considering that modern humans today have like 2% Neanderthal DNA ...
Humans in Africa hunt and eat gorillas, so probably.
I'm really curious if they experienced the 'uncanny valley' when encountering cousins.
Most likely. I was watching something the other day about herpes evolution in the primate and human predecessors. There’s evidence to suggest it spread to one of our ancestors through the act of eating another member of a distinctly related lineage. Sure it could’ve potentially been through sexual contact, but it would’ve been more likely to get through an open wound. Ie fighting/hunting/butchering and getting infected blood in the wounds. Sexual contact would have to imply there was active sores and microtears or worse on the opposing side during the act.
There’s also evidence we butchered and ate Neanderthals and vice versa, and we looked and acted VERY similarly-to the point mixed multi-generational family groups developed. You’ll eat anything when you’re hungry enough, and it would come down to physical vs intellectual advantages for who may have hunted who.
Humans sometimes eat other apes and on occasion even modern humans have eaten other humans, so I think it's quite likely they preyed on paranthropus at least a few times.
Fascinating how so much information can be gleaned from a few teeth & skulls! Paleontologists truly are the unsung forensic analysts of the scientific world!
The survival of the fittest - coined by Herbert Spencer, not - as widely believed - Charles Darwin, Darwin actually hated Spencer because he believed in determinism. For Darwin, evolution was not deterministic but fortuitous.
I like the bloopers at the end. Keep them. They're pretty entertaining.🤣
If something went different in our evolution, we'd have hotdog hands right now.
Or be...
CRAB PEOPLE!! 🦀
*nah, I got the reference
Probability drive 😂
"We dont know why they arent here..."
Well, no surprises there... There's always more you dont know than what you do know.
Does Paranthropus show any signs of being omnivorous?
If not, that could explain why our ancestors survived but theirs did not. If they were only herbivores, then our ancestors would have had more potential food available and make us a bit more "extinction proof", so to speak.
Yup, and we could eat them, but not them us weeeeeeeeeeee!
Apparently, P. robustus was omnivorous like us, but P. boisei was purely herbivorous.
@@MarkVrem Exactly my thinking. Come a drought, the herbivores are all going hungry, while the omnivores are snacking on them...
@@nunyabidniz2868 I imagine the foot races were glorious!
🐶🐶🐶🐶
These videos are so relaxing!!
I just cant ignore the possibility that we may be the most aggressive human species of em all and simply killed everyone else.
As a South African archaeology student, the Robert Broom "five chocolates for ancient teeth" story always makes me laugh
Look how we treat each other. I don't think it's that much of a mystery what happened to other hominids.
I do enjoy listening and watching Blake!
i was chanting paranthropus lol. i was pretty sure that's the genus you were talking about, but i was so excited when you said it. i love this genus.
does it make sense to say that i miss the extinct apes; can you miss a species you've never met? (especially homo erectus and h. sapiens neanderthalensis, but).
0:55 well, the evolution of barbie doll anatomy certainly would've made it harder to reproduce /j
If you could please have the sound engineer remove that weird vibrating noise in the background of the entire video and please refrain from using it on future videos. It makes it hard to focus on the content, thank you. Love your videos!
I didn’t notice it until you pointed it out. Now I’m annoyed. Thanks
I have absolutely zero idea what you are talking about. ??? Can't hear anything of the sort.
Brilliant. This is one of the best reasons as to why, exactly, we have both science and speculative (science) fiction. Rock on, dudes. Please cover both Great Kropotkin and Iain M Banks. And even crochety old, much missed, Terry Prachett. It's all relevant and related, trust me...
I was under the impression that a vital part of our ancestors’ evolutionary brain development was the incorporation of meat into their diets, because cognitive processes are so calorically expensive.
If these hominids weren’t able (or willing) to branch out to meat, I feel like that possibly could have played a significant role in their inability to last.
Can one of the next videos be a discussion on the divergence between C3 and C4 plants? Perhaps CAM plants get jammed in there too? :D
I was waiting for this comment
I miss Steve! Hey Steve, wherever you are, I hope you are doing well.
Robustus! What big teeth you have!!
“The better to eat you with, my dear.”
Interesting take on the stone tools. He says that because of the overlap in species at many sites, we can't tell who the tools belonged to, while omitting the 2.9 million year old Oldewan tool site at Kanjera South, Kenya where the only hominin fossils were Paranthropus teeth. In the words of the researchers "While we can't demonstrate Paranthropus actually made these tools, this species is so far the only suspect at the scene of the crime."
Wow! Talk about getting the raw end of the deal. That fossil would be valued nearly priceless and he traded it for chocolate bars.
Who would value it priceless? Who would pay for it? One of the billionnaire scientists?
I'm just being to learn about our ancestors and I had heard their name here and there while watching other videos on the subject but now I know so much more! This was really fascinating.
One of my favorite Red Alert 2 quotes: "A little C4 knocking on your door."
"...and we are still here"
for the time being...
I feel like everyone asking the "what if X went differently" questions should really take on speculative evolution as a hobby. Lots of projects already in the works exploring potential evolutionary paths for earth life, which are fun to read as well as contribute to.
I get why you might not want to broach the subject in the main video, but is there any thought that those stone tools at the Paranthropus site might have been weapons that other Hominin's might have used against them?
I think I've heard speculation to that effect from other sources. :-/
If paranthropus was killed, butchered & eaten by any other hominin, there would have been obvious marks of butchery on the fossils.
Very interesting! The older we get in our lineage, the more we're finding out how we became the sole hominid species.
And bring back the jokes. They are far better than trivia in my humble opinion.😊😊😊
The artist's rendering of the male with the ken doll bump instead of genetalia has me wondering (and laughing at) what his junk actually looked like. ..further proof that boys don't grow up, we just get bigger, lol.
Plot twist: it was a remarkably deep convergent evolution and was actually a reptile, not a mammal.
If our fellow apes are any indication, probably remarkably small by our standards!
1:16 That paleontologist clearly doubled as a witch 😅
A house made of candy? Perhaps the house had chicken feet? Lol
C3 is also a explosive(Composition 3)😆
Love seeing humans natural evolution, it's actually amazing & beautiful. Actualities how we came about is awesome.
Maybe the question we really should be asking ourselves is not why ours numerous relatives are extinct, but why we aren't? Perhaps the hominids were a dead-end species, one that shouldn't have survived (meaning: the direction of our evolution relied upon specific conditions that ceased soon before the extinction of our relatives), but homo sapiens evolved something unique and ground breaking enough to escape the extinction of the hominids? Food for thought.
Homo sapiens is a super-predator. Our uniqueness is mostly how talented we are at various forms of violence :(
Love this show!
Is it possible that our ancestors made them extinct, just as we've wiped out so many other species?
Of course we did....
These videos are so fantastic.
Thank you science Daddy
i have alway suspected that the reason for the 'uncanny valley' is because we competed with and feared other sapient species in our deep/lost past, and that they either died out naturally, or we eliminated them, but carry that instinctual fear of other sapients.
I would imagine extinction is the default path for a species.
12:10. I have hope all of a sudden! Thank you!
"we're still here"............for how long?
Great job as always !!!
Awesome video! Is there a possibility that the tools found with Paranthropus be from another hominid species (such as ancestral Neanderthals) consuming Paranthropus?
This was my question, as well!
there have been tools found in multiple locations with Paranthropus remains, some without any other hominid remains. By that time our lineage hadn’t yet diverged from Neanderthals.
Neanderthals are completely impossible because they evolved in Europe around 450k years ago, while P. bosei is from 2.4 to 1.2 millions years ago and only found in the southern parts of Africa.
But yes, it's been hypothesized that the stone tools were made by H. erectus. The thing however is that lithic technology is dated to 3.3 millions years ago anyway (with Kenyanthropus, and before the first Homo) so there's no reason to assume that Paranthropus couldn't do it.
In fact it wouldn't be too surprising to discover that the only reason why modern apes don't also have a proper lithic industry is simply because they don't need it.
@@Ezullof thanks!!
Eons is the best
Petition to buy the presenter a drink and get the details on the herpes story 👀 👀
I second that! 🍻 🗣️
Third!
I am very passionate about the "What if" regarding life evolution ❤👍
On one hand, our direct ancestors survived because they weren't picky, on the other, we've evolved into the single most planet-bustingly demanding animal that ever lived. 🤔
I coined the term “homo-termitus “
Here’s a cool idea for a future video, exploring the Artifacts of ancient Europeans during the Wurm glaciation, like the fertility goddess’s or the mammoth tents
Yeah, I'd rather eat C3 than C4...