Foto: Durova · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What nickname did Paranthropus boisei get for its teeth?
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Nutcracker Man
Louis Leakey coined it for the enormous molars and that very name later proved misleading.
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What was the bony crest on the skull of Paranthropus for?
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Anchoring huge chewing muscles
The sagittal crest gave attachment to muscles that closed the jaw with enormous force: gorillas and many carnivores have the same feature.
What did the "Nutcracker Man" actually eat most, according to isotope analysis?
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Grasses and sedges
Hardly any nuts: the carbon in its enamel points to a diet of tough grasses: abundant, but usable only through relentless grinding.
Who found the famous skull in Olduvai Gorge in 1959?
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Mary Leakey
She discovered it, her husband Louis described it. Mary Leakey later also found the Laetoli footprints: two of the field's most important finds.
How big were the molars of Paranthropus compared with ours?
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About four times as large
Plus extremely thick enamel: the chewing apparatus was this lineage's specialist tool, as the brain became that of the Homo line.
How many species of Paranthropus are known?
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Three
P. aethiopicus, P. boisei and P. robustus: the first two in East Africa, robustus in South Africa. All with the same design: robust jaws, modest brain.
When did Paranthropus live?
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About 2.7 to 1.2 million years ago
A million and a half years: longer than Homo sapiens has existed. Extinction is no sign of inadequacy, only of changed conditions.
Alongside which human genus did Paranthropus live in Africa?
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Alongside Homo
Homo habilis and early Homo erectus shared the same landscapes: two strategies side by side: the brain and the jaw.
How did the survival strategies of Paranthropus and Homo differ?
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Paranthropus bet on chewing, Homo on tools
One adapted its body to hard food, the other processed food outside the body. Only one of the two lines still exists.
What does the genus name Paranthropus mean?
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Beside the human
Greek para (beside) and anthropos (human) (the name states its position exactly): closely related, but not on our line.
Foto: Nrkpan · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What is the dark-stained 1985 fossil KNM-WT 17000 from Lake Turkana?
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A skull of Paranthropus aethiopicus
The 2.5-million-year-old skull KNM-WT 17000 from Lake Turkana is stained deep black by manganese: the oldest known Paranthropus species.
What was found in South Africa near Paranthropus robustus?
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Bone tools
Worn bone points, apparently for digging into termite mounds. Whether Paranthropus used them or the contemporaneous early Homo is unresolved.
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