Extinct Humans

From the earliest days of their science, paleoanthropologists have shown a propensity to envision the human “family tree” as a straight-line progression from the apelike australopithecines to the enigmatic Homo habilis to the perhaps misapprehended Homo erectus to the famous (or infamous) Neanderthals, culminating in us, Homo sapiens. The problem is that this model is unlike the evolutionary pattern of any other known vertebrate (or any organism, for that matter) which reveals multiple branching and extinctions.Since mid-century it has been evident that in South Africa two species of australopithecines existed at the same time, one of which – a specialized vegetarian – went extinct, leaving no successors. Then fossils were unearthed that demonstrated early members of our genus (Homo) existed side by side with australopithecines, complicating the picture still further.