The Human Family Tree - Australopithecus group
The Australopithecus group of Human Ancestor Early hominins (humans and their distant extinct cousins) known as the australopiths existed in Africa between 4.1 and 1.4 million years ago. The Species in this group of early humans generally walked upright but they also climbed trees. They were formerly called as the australopithecines, but they are not a "natural" group—in other words, they are not a "clade"—because they do not all descended from a single common ancestor. Instead, they are collectively categorized informally because almost all of them have the same adaptive grade, or set of adaptations. They are specifically bipedal apes with, to a greater or lesser extent, enlarged canine and precanine teeth (postcanine megadontia), as well as other accompanying changes to their eating mechanisms. It is obvious that dietary modifications had a significant impact on their evolutionary history. They can also be identified by the absence of derived traits commonly fou...