Recently I discussed the evolution of pre-human primates, bringing the story up until about 3 million years ago. Today, I'll say something about the timeline since then. Three million years ago the most human-like species around was the australopithecus (southern apes). There has been a lot of focus in recent years on Australopithecus Afarensis. Afarensis had a variegated diet, adapted it seems to plants both of the forest and the savanna. It likely ate meat too, judging from the stone tools it had available. The heel bone was adapted for bipedality. Did the afarensis give rise to homo-something-or-other? The transition, if there was one, is difficult to pin down, but the two species have a close relationship of some sort. An abstract from a paleontological paper written in 2015, concerning the discovery of a partial mandible with teeth from circa 2.8 MYA, reads in part: " This specimen combines primitive traits seen in early Australopithecus with derived morphology ob