HOMINID EVOLUTION

Almost everything we know about human origins has been discovered during the past 100 years. In the 1800s, European Neandertals were the only human fossils known. In 1925, Raymond Dart discovered the remarkable Taung child, now known as Australopithecus. This discovery demonstrated the first characteristics that separated the human lineage from our ape forebears were not our impressive brains, but walking upright on two feet and that the explosion of human intelligence and culture are more recent. Since then paleontologists have discovered many species on the human family tree and have made remarkable discoveries about the course of human evolution.

Despite the burgeoning fossil record, age-old questions about human evolution remain, such as which of these many species gave rise to Homo? What were the earliest hominids like? What did they eat? What kind of groups did they live in? When did we gain our distinctive features such as manual dexterity, bipedal locomotion and large brains? What about language and culture? Recent fossil discoveries along with new approaches to understanding existing fossils are providing exciting new insights into these and other questions surrounding our origins and evolution.

This symposium examines the latest evidence for evolution in the beginnings of our lineage in Africa, and new interpretations of "old" evidence for the special case of Neandertals in Europe. Human paleontology is a dynamic scientific field and these researchers present the latest information of some of the more interesting issues in the human fossil record.

REGISTER BY FRIDAY, OCT. 23

About the Brother Lucian Blersch Symposium

Organized by the School of Natural Sciences at St. Edward's University, the event is free and open to the public. This symposium honors Brother Lucian Blersch, CSC, a longtime professor of engineering at St. Edward's who died in 1986 and in whose name a professorship in the School of Natural Sciences was endowed by a gift from J.B.N. Morris, hs '48, '52, and his family.