Recently, the origin and evolution of human beings (the meaning is the same as evolution, China's customary evolution) has broken into people's vision, because these two discoveries about human evolution have filled many gaps and provided new evidence in evolution.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > found pocket-sized border city fish fossils in Chongqing</h1>
A week ago, the information on the discovery of pocket border city fish fossils in Chongqing was made public, and researchers found 2 cm of border city fish fossils in Xiushan, Chongqing in 2019 and studied it, which is a completely preserved jawed fish (jaw [hé], which makes up the bones and muscles of the upper and lower parts of the mouth) about 423 million years ago, this fish fossil is currently one of the earliest complete jawfish fossils in the world, and the discovery site is the second site in the world with a complete full jaw shield fish.
Border city fish fossils
The discovery of Xiushan Silurian fish fossils is a major breakthrough in the history of vertebrate evolution, providing unique and important empirical data for the study of the early evolution of jaws, which will fill a number of key missing loops in the evolutionary spectrum of "fish to man", and the early evolution of jaws and teeth in the evolutionary history of vertebrates "from fish to man" has new empirical evidence.
Don't underestimate the discovery of this fish can really have a big impact, 99.8% of the vertebrates on the earth, including humans, have jaws, and in order to prove the evolution of vertebrates "from fish to man", it is necessary to find jaw fossils as evidence.
Pocket border city fish restoration map
Ordovician (444-485 million years ago) has jaw fossils, Devonian (359-419 million years ago) there are jaw fossils, but in the middle of this period of Time Silurian (419-444 million years ago) there are jaw fossils seriously missing, the fossils found are not complete are scattered fish scales and spines, the lack of fossils during this time makes researchers unable to continue the origin and early evolution of jaws, without fossil evidence as a mystery can not be explored.
Now with this fossil of the Silurian jawfish, the evolutionary path from fish to man can continue to be studied, and the study found that the fossil of the border city fish represents a newly discovered transition between the jaws and teeth of modern fish and the primitive shield fish.
The yellow color indicates the human maxilla
At the same time, this newly discovered ancient fish is closely related to the origin of modern jawed vertebrates, and also provides important fossil evidence for the origin and evolution of jaws and teeth of modern jawed animals (including humans), that is to say, our jaws and teeth may originate from this small fish!
The yellow color indicates the mandible
So what about the newly named "Dragon Man"?
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the new human race "Dragon Man" from 146,000 years ago</h1>
The well-preserved skull fossil of "Dragon Man" was actually found by a farmer in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province in the 1930s, buried at home for special historical reasons, told his son before his death, and then donated to Hebei University of Geosciences in 2018, and then researchers conducted a series of studies to prove that the skull of Dragon Man or from the late "Meso Pleistocene" lake strata, So far, between 146,000 and 309,000 years, because the discovery site is located in Heilongjiang, the fossil of the ancient head has been officially named as a new human species "Dragon Man".
The rightmost dragon skull
The Middle Pleistocene is a period in the middle of the Quaternary Glaciation Pleistocene, determined by the International Quaternary Conference in 1932, with an inconclusive date (about 125,000 to 800,000 years ago). The Middle Pleistocene is an important period of global climate and environmental change, with climate cycle transitions, increased global ice levels, declining sea levels, and mammal migration or extinction.
Through chemical analysis of the sediments inside the fossil, the researchers speculated that a male of about 50 years old lived in forest-covered alluvial plains and hunted and collected wild fruits.
Of course, there is still controversy in the scientific community about whether this fossil is a new human race, and the specific controversy is that the skull cannot extract DNA or protein for identification, and can only be analyzed by the shape, geographical location and appearance of the fossil, and it is impossible to prove whether the skull originated from the early Neanderthal evolution.
Why is it controversial only because past research results suggest that Neanderthals are the closest relatives to Homo sapiens, but dragons have some characteristics of Homo sapiens, and that our separation from Neanderthals occurred about 600,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens
The discovery of the Dragons heralded a common ancestor of Draco and Homo sapiens and Neanderthals 1 million years ago, after which they separated, meaning that our separation from Neanderthals may have been about 400,000 years earlier than we previously thought they were 600,000 years ago.
It also indicates that the relationship between ancient human dragons and modern humans is closer than that of Neanderthals and modern humans, which is entirely a matter of ancient human and modern human kinship.
Therefore, the discovery of the dragon man provides crucial evidence for the study of the origin of Homo sapiens and human evolution, and once it is confirmed that the relationship between the dragon man and us is closer, then there will be many new ideas about the evolution of ancient humans to modern humans!
Although DNA and proteins cannot be extracted due to their age, these controversies can also be verified by extracting genetic material from mitochondria for DNA analysis, giving more empirical evidence to the evolutionary process of humans regardless of the outcome!
Dragon Skull
Unfortunately, due to the age, the exact location of the discovery cannot be known, otherwise it is possible to find other fossils related to the living environment at that time, and other relevant evidence can be found more accurately.
After reading it, it is a little confusing, let's briefly talk about the evolution of ancient humans.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the evolutionary history of humans</h1>
Modern scientific circles believe that humans evolved from primates, that is, within 50 million years, the apes evolved into the ape branch 33 million to 24 million years ago, and then the proto-Consur apes of East Africa 13 million to 12 million years ago were the ancestors of humans and African apes.
About 12 million years ago, the crustal movement formed a great rift valley on the land of eastern Africa, the great rift valley divided Africa into two independent animal systems in the east and the west, the great rift valley this barrier became the key to the separation of man and ape, the west of the rift valley is still a dense and wet bush, the environment has not changed much, and the life of the ape has not changed at all.
East of the Great Rift Valley, due to changes in the Earth's crust, rainfall gradually decreased, forests disappeared to form grasslands, most of the apes became extinct, and only a small number of apes adapted to the new environment and continued to change.
About 5 million to 8 million years ago, some chimpanzee-like ape species east of the Great Rift Valley successfully evolved into Australopithecus at the junction of forests and grasslands, and the history of humans began, which is also the dividing point between the evolution of humans and orangutans.
Australopithecus is called "the person in the process of formation", which also enters the four stages of human evolution: Australopithecus, Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens.
The numbers in the figure represent the age
Australopithecus learned to use natural tools but could not make tools, and Noh (early apes) could simply make stone tools.
Homo erectus (late ape man) will make stone tools for different purposes, and learned to use fire, is a very critical stage of human evolution; about 1 million years ago, after the ice age came, Africa began to grassland, Homo erectus began to migrate to the world, and then formed different species, Eurasia and Africa are distributed (Heidelberger, Guawa ape, Beijing ape people are Homo erectus), which is also the first time humans out of Africa!
Zhoukoudian Beijing Ape Man Ruins
Homo sapiens, on the other hand, learned to make fire by hand, using stones and bones to make delicate tools, of which Homo sapiens was subdivided into early and late Homo sapiens.
Early Homo sapiens (30,000-250,000 years ago), homo erectus who remained in Africa evolved to early Homo sapiens also began to migrate, is the second time humans have left Africa.
After the first migration of Homo erectus came to Europe, Heidelbergians evolved about 600,000 years ago, and Heidelbergians evolved Neanderthals about 300,000 years ago, mainly in Europe and the Middle East.
Independent evolution into the early Homo sapiens Neanderthals can create a more advanced tool, can be described as the hegemon of early Homo sapiens, but then Neanderthals encountered the 2nd out of Africa of early Homo sapiens and the 3rd out of Africa of late Homo sapiens, and even coexisted with each other for a period of time, during this coexistence there is natural survival competition, and finally the 2nd out of Africa of the early Homo sapiens and independent evolution into the early Homo sapiens Neanderthals lost to the third time out of Africa of the late Homo sapiens, Neanderthals gradually disappeared, As for what the reason is also controversial.
Then, 60,000 to 30,000 years ago, with the advent of the Ice Age, the living environment became more and more difficult, and all the early Homo sapiens were eliminated and extinct (Dali, Maba, Dingcun, Xujiayao, and Neanderthals belonged to early Homo sapiens), and it is not clear whether Neanderthals came to East Asia, South Asia, and Africa.
China's dragonmen are naturally classified among the early Homo sapiens, so the emergence of the dragonmen may subvert the previous scientific community's conclusion about how long the extinct Neanderthals in human evolution separated from us, so there is controversy!
Speaking of early Homo sapiens, let's talk about late Homo sapiens (50,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Cave People, Hetao People, Liujiang People, Qilin Shan People, and Zhiyu People both belonged to late Homo sapiens), which is an ancient human being that is closer to modern people, that is, the ancestors of modern people (humans since 10,000 years are called modern people, but they also belong to a kind of late Homo sapiens).
The early Homo sapiens who remained in Africa evolved into late Homo sapiens, and the appearance also changed, with the front teeth and face decreasing, the brow crest weakening, and the skull height slowly increasing.
Then began the third exodus from Africa, reaching Australia about 50,000 years ago, reaching Asia 30,000 years ago, reaching the Americas 12,000 years ago, late Homo sapiens with no knees, body hair degeneration, language and labor, social and class.
Then art appeared, matrilineal clans appeared, and today's four major human races have gradually evolved and formed, and human civilization has officially begun!
In fact, the most important point in the process of human evolution is the increase in brain capacity, which is generally speaking, the increase in intelligence.
About the history of human evolution, this is only within 50 million years, during this time the ape evolved into humans, so what about 50 million years away? How did the ape appear, and what was the earliest form? This is about human origin.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > human origin</h1>
Scientists have analyzed how the first life was born in such a long period of time, which has existed on earth for 4.6 billion years, and where today's diverse species came from, which is still a mystery.
Darwin's theory of biological evolution believes that human beings are the product of biological evolution, that is to say, human beings were first evolved from other organisms, and what is more defensible at present is the evolution from fish to humans.
The study found that we humans should have originated 290 million years ago, fish organisms, which are the ancestors of jaw-like vertebrates.
After a period of time, the earth began to become arid and hot, many water systems gradually disappeared, most of the fish died, only a few fish began to use the fins to adapt to the environment began to walk, and over time the fins became developed.
Some of these surviving fish still can't adapt to the environment and die, and the rest continue to evolve, and the fins slowly become limbs.
With the continuous change of climate and environment, their physical structure characteristics on land are constantly changing, and they have adapted to land life and completely separated from the characteristics of fish.
In the process of evolution, they began to gradually become different, forming different species, some becoming reptiles, and some began to evolve into forest apes.
In the subsequent evolution, it continued to branch out, forming today's monkeys, orangutans, baboons and humans.
So when the researchers found that the fossils of the border city fish were very excited, they completely filled the gap in the fossils of jawed animals for a period of time, and also gave the impetus for this stagnant theory to continue to go on!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > summary</h1>
The discovery of fish fossils has substantial fossil evidence for the evolutionary exploration from fish to humans, which is said to be hundreds of millions of years old; while the discovery of dragons is a problem involving the relationship between ancient humans and modern humans in human evolution, which is about hundreds of thousands of years ago, although they are both substantial and important evidence, but the two discoveries are completely different research directions.
In the long 4.6 billion years of history after the formation of the earth, human beings are only a trivial passer-by, and each new fossil discovery has helped humans to explore the past, but it is still insignificant, and there is still a long way to go to figure out where human beings come from, and it is possible that in the next few hundred years or even thousands of years, it is still impossible to fully understand the origin of species, the origin of human beings!
Of course, in addition to the evolution path from fish to man, there are also a series of theories of creationism (that is, the creation of man by Nuwa), the theory of cosmic life (human beings are foreign), the theory of chemical evolution, and so on, so where do you think human beings came from?
Resources:
Big Discoveries! Our jaws and teeth may have originated from this little fish" Science and Technology Daily 2021-06-21
"Chinese scientists found that 146,000 years ago, the new human race was named "Dragon Man"" Guangming Network 06-26
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