Message #231283

[Kristin Moore]

Late Australopithecine Species

The early australopithecines have been referred to collectively as gracile click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced species (literally "gracefully slender").  Most of them were relatively small, slender, and delicate boned compared to the somewhat more muscular, robust species of australopithecines that mostly came later.  However, this is not always a reliable descriptive distinction because the range of variation in physical appearance of the two groups of species overlaps.  Subsequently, some individual graciles were bigger than some of the robust ones.  However, the robust species shared some characteristics of their heads that dramatically show that they had diverged from the evolutionary line that would become humans.  The late australopithecines, which were all robust species, had larger jaws accompanied by pronounced sagittal crests in the case of males.  They also had much larger back teeth (premolars and molars) and smaller front ones (incisors) compared to those of the early humans who were present at that time.