Hours per Week | |||||
Semester: | 7th | - Lecturing: | 2 | ECTS: | 4 |
Course Type: | Elective | - Practical | 2 | Prerequisites: | - |
Course Code: | E7206 | - Laboratory | - | Expected | Y2205 |
eClass URL | ➽ | Total Hours of | - |
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It is an introductory course about Evolutionary Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology. The theoretical part concerns the Darwinian theory of evolution and the natural selection, the Neodarwinian theory, the problems concerning the species concepts, the speciation procedures, the cladistic methodology, the modes of evolutionary change, the position of the primates in the evolutionary frame and the more important groups of the primates. The practical part focuses at the application of the theoretical knowledge for the interpretation of microevolutionary and macroevolutionary events, and the practice on fossil primates and development on subjects relative to palaeoanthropology.
Basic principles of the Darwinian theory, natural selection; Basic principles of the Neodarwinian theory (Evolutionary Synthesis); What is Phylogeny, methodology of the cladistics, cladograms; Events and trends in the evolutionary lines; Speciation and species concepts; Evolutionary changes, rate of evolution, models and results of the natural selection; The fossil record, microevolution and macroevolution; The primates in the evolutionary frame. Taxonomy of the primates. “Lower” and “higher” primates, haplorrhines, catarhines; Hominidae. Most important stages of the hominid evolution (early Hominini, australopithecines,); Introduction to the human osteology, adaptations for bipedalism; The evolution of Homo; Homo neanderthalensis; The evolution of Homo in islands.