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300078 VO Hominid Evolution (2025W)

REMOTE

Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

Language: German

Examination dates

Lecturers

Philipp Gunz

Classes

The lecture will start on October 7th 2025. You will be able to watch the lecture via the Moodle platform. The lecture is in German, but all slides will be in English. You can also ask questions in both German and English.

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

What makes us human and how do we differ from our extant and extinct relatives? How, when and where did we become human during our evolutionary history?

This course provides an overview about our evolution from a paleoanthropological viewpoint, discussing the fossil record of our ancestors and extinct relatives and drawing on other fields like comparative anatomy, paleontology, archeology, geology and genetics.

The goal of this course is to gain a basic understanding about our evolutionary past and to understand how we acquired our current knowledge and will learn more in the future.

The following topics will be discussed:
- excavation, classification, primates, Planet of the Apes in the Miocene
- dating methods
- early hominins: bipedal locomotion and adaptations to new habitats
- Australopithecus and Paranthropus
- brain evolution
- Early Homo: the first members of our genus
- Homo erectus
- Homo in the Middle Pleistocene and the origin of Neandertals
- Neandertals
- ancient DNA
- the origin of modern humans
- the dispersal of modern humans

Assessment and permitted materials

Written exam: 24 single choice questions, one of the four choices of answers is correct.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

minimum requirement to pass: 50% of full marks

Examination topics

all topics discussed in the lectures

Reading list

If interested in more in-depth literature:

Johanson D, Edgar B, From Lucy to Language, Simon & Schuster

Stringer C, Andrews P, The Complete World of Human Evolution, Thames & Hudson Ltd

Cartmill M, Smith FH, The Human Lineage, John Wiley &Sons Inc

Klein RG, The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, The University of Chicago Press

Association in the course directory

BAN 2, BBO 8, BMG 10, BMB 10, BOE 11, BPB 11, BZO 11, EC EA PM 1, UF BU 10

Last modified: Tu 11.11.2025 14:47