Human Evolution Lab Report

The purpose of this experiment was to observe the process of human evolution by observing similar features of the Pan troglodytes, Australopithecus afarensis, Homo erectus, Gorilla gorilla, Australopithecus boisei and the, Homo neanderthalensis in comparison to those of the Homo sapien. According to Darwinism, the species that had the most traits in common with the Homo sapien must be the most related while species with the least traits in common with the Homo sapien were the least similar. For example, the Homo neanderthalensis had a total of fourteen traits in common with the Homo sapien while the Gorilla gorilla only had two traits in common with the Homo sapien. Thus, the Homo neanderthalensis must be more closely related to the Homo sapien than the Gorilla gorilla.
The data collected in this experiment does match this for the most part. The Homo neanderthalensis did have the most similarities to the Homo sapien, with fourteen similarities followed by Australopithecus afarensis at eleven similarities, Australopithecus boisei at ten similarities, Homo erectus at eight similarities, Pan troglodytes at six similarities, and Gorilla gorilla with the least number of similarities; two. Obviously, some the order was a little mixed up, but it did generally follow the order evolution discovered by the scientists. According to scientists, the Gorilla gorilla should have been the second to least related to the Homo sapien out of the seven species tested. However, the data collected placed the Gorilla gorilla as the least related out of all of the species with only two morphological features in common with the Homo