Postmodernismo

The word "hominid" in this website refers to members of the family of humans, Hominidae, which consists of all species on our side of the last common ancestor of humans and living apes. Hominids are included in the superfamily of all apes, the Hominoidea, the members of which are called hominoids. Although the hominid fossil record is far from complete, and the evidence is often fragmentary,there is enough to give a good outline of the evolutionary history of humans.
The time of the split between humans and living apes used to be thought to have occurred 15 to 20 million years ago, or even up to 30 or 40 million years ago. Some apes occurring within that time period, such as Ramapithecus, used to be considered as hominids, and possible ancestors of humans. Later fossil finds indicatedthat Ramapithecus was more closely related to the orang-utan, and new biochemical evidence indicated that the last common ancestor of hominids and apes occurred between 5 and 10 million years ago, and probably in the lower end of that range (Lewin 1987). Ramapithecus therefore is no longer considered a hominid.
The field of science which studies the human fossil record is known aspaleoanthropology. It is the intersection of the disciplines of paleontology (the study of ancient lifeforms) and anthropology (the study of humans).
Hominid Species
The species here are listed roughly in order of appearance in the fossil record (note that this ordering is not meant to represent an evolutionary sequence), except that the robust australopithecines are kept together. Each name consists of a genusname (e.g. Australopithecus, Homo) which is always capitalized, and a specific name (e.g. africanus, erectus) which is always in lower case. Within the text, genus names are often omitted for brevity. Each species has a type specimen which was used to define it.
Sahelanthropus tchadensis 
This species was named in July 2002 from fossils discovered in Chad in Central Africa (Brunet et al. 2002,Wood 2002). It is the oldest known hominid or near-hominid species, dated at between 6 and 7 million years old. This species is known from a nearly complete cranium nicknamed Toumai, and a number of fragmentary lower jaws and teeth. The skull has a very small brain size of approximately 350 cc. It is not known whether it was bipedal. S. tchadensis has many primitive apelike features, such as thesmall brainsize, along with others, such as the brow ridges and small canine teeth, which are characteristic of later hominids. This mixture, along with the fact that it comes from around the time when the hominids are thought to have diverged from chimpanzees, suggests it is close to the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.
Orrorin tugenensis
This species was named in July 2001 fromfossils discovered in western Kenya (Senut et al. 2001). The fossils include fragmentary arm and thigh bones, lower jaws, and teeth and were discovered in deposits that are about 6 million years old. The limb bones are about 1.5 times larger than those of Lucy, and suggest that it was about the size of a female chimpanzee. Its finders have claimed that Orrorin was a human ancestor adapted to bothbipedality and tree climbing, and that the australopithecines are an extinct offshoot. Given the fragmentary nature of the remains, other scientists have been skeptical of these claims so far (Aiello and Collard 2001). A later paper (Galik et al. 2004) has found further evidence of bipedality in the fossil femur.
Ardipithecus ramidus 
This species was named Australopithecus ramidus in September 1994(White et al. 1994; Wood 1994) from some fragmentary fossils dated at 4.4 million years. A more complete skull and partial skeleton was discovered in late 1994 and based on that fossil, the species was reallocated to the genus Ardipithecus (White et al. 2005). This fossil was extremely fragile, and excavation, restoration and analysis of it took 15 years. It was published in October 2009, and...