While looking for fossils in East Africa you stumble upon a fossil hominin skull, some stone tools, and a jumble of animal bones sitting on the surface at the bottom of a hill. You know it must have eroded out from somewhere in the hill but cannot pinpoint exactly where. The hill itself is comprised of four layers of sediment, each corresponding to a different period in time - 3.4 million years ago, 2.3 million years ago, 1.5 million year ago, and 500 thousand years ago from bottom to top. Using the information given below, determine which layer in time the ancient material came from so you may continue digging and hopefully uncover more.
* Hominin skull traits: Small brain but bigger than a chimps, bipedal, small teeth, no canine diastema.
* Stone tool traits: Simple cores and flakes.
* Animal bones: Most of them broken and bear carnivore tooth marks, some also have cut marks from stone tools, but these came after the carnivore teeth.
* Paleoenvironment: Isotope analysis suggests the ancient environment at the site was a wooded grassland near a river.
(Answer Choices)
- 500 thousand years ago
- 3.4 million years ago
- 1.5 million years ago
- 2.3 million years ago
Now that you've determined how old the fossils and artifacts are, using the same information as well as your answer from question #1 determine the likely hominin species.
(Answer Choices)
- Homo habilis
- Australopithecus africanus
- Homo ergaster
- Paranthropus boisei
Now that you know how old the site is and what hominin species was present there, using the same information as well as your answers from the first two questions to determine the stone tool industry that best characterizes the artifacts.
(Answer Choices)
- Chopper-chopping tool Industry
- Acheulean
- Lomewkian
- Oldowan