Download Study Guide for the Great, Nasty, God

Study Guide for the Great, Nasty, God-Awful Final
from Hell
Introduction to Physical Anthropology~ Jim Eighmey Instructor
 If you study the past exam and your study guides you will do well on this exam.
 Topics You should be able to write about:
 Definitions of culture. What is it and why it is important.
 Understand the principles of superposition and uniformitarianism in geology/paleontology.
 Understand the processes of transcription, translation, and cell division and how they
produce genetic variation in organisms.
 Review your notes on genetics. Understand the following concepts:
 Structure of DNA
Translation Transcription Amino Acids Chromosomes
 Mitosis Meiosis haploid diploid
MDNA Y-Chromosome
 Gregor Mendel Polygenic Traits
Discrete Traits
Dominant and Recessive
 The great chain of being
Lamark Fitness Macroevolution
Microevolution
 Evolutionary theory
 Essentialism, Great chain of being
 Darwinian selection, Fitness, Biological Evolution
 Homologous structures, analogous structures
 Convergent evolution, parallel evolution, divergent evolution
 Adaptive radiation
 Gradualism vs. punctuated equalibriam
 Phylogenies vs. cladograms, anagenisis vs. cladogensis
 Allopatric and Sympatric evolution.
 Ecological Species
 Lamarckism
 Thomas Malthus, Alfred Wallace
 What is a species
 Primate Taxonomy: Know the basics.
 What are the prosimians? The pongidae? Features of Old World vs. New World monkeys?
 Concentrate on the Apes. Do you know the taxa of the Great Apes?
 Hominids vs. Hominoids

Primate Anatomy and Features
 Unique features of primates
 Aboreal adaptations, brachiation
 Bipedalism vs. quadrupedalism
 Sexual dimorphism
 Dental formulas

Primate Behavior
 Mother/Infant bonds
 Grooming
 Altruism

Paleontology: Basic differences between Australopithecines and Homo sp.
 A. boisei, H. habilis, A. africanus, A. afarensis, A. robustus, H. ergaster,
 El Fayum
 Superposition
 Radiocarbon dating
 Absolute (chronometric) vs. relative dating techniques
 Who were the Neanderthals? Where and when? What was their relation to Homo sapiens
sapiens>
 When did modern humans emerge? Where? How are moderns different from archaic Homo?
 When did we become bipedal? How do we know?
 Pangea ~ what was it? When was it?
 What is an analogous structure? Anogenisis?
 Foramen magnum? Supraorbital Taurus.
 Know the dental formula for hominids like us.
 Biostratigraphy
 Taphonomy
 K-selection vs. R-selection.
 When did modern people emerge? Where? Why?
 Homo erectus: Zhoukoudian. H. Erectus’s technology, distributional history, basic cranial
features. Eugene Dubois. WT1500.
 Australopithecine technology, general location, form.
 Mousterian? Ascheulian? Olduwan? What are these? Know them!
 What’s a hand axe? What’s a core?