The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the development of human species, and the evolution of humans' ancestors. It includes a brief explanation of some animals, species or genera, which are possible ancestors of Homo sapiens.
It does not address the origin of life, which is addressed by abiogenesis, but presents a possible line of descendants that led to humans. This timeline is based on studies from paleontology, developmental biology, morphology and from anatomical and genetic data. The study of human evolution is a major component of anthropology.
Read more about Timeline Of Human Evolution: Homo Sapiens Taxonomy
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or evolution:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“The more specific idea of evolution now reached is—a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)