Talk:Timeline of human evolution

Taxonomy
What is the source for the calling modern humans a sub species of Homo Sapiens? In the linked article on Sub species, it is stated that there must be two sub species or none. While their are other species in Homo, what are the other sub species in Homo Sapiens? 208.253.17.141 (talk) 18:05, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Homo Sapiens Idaltu. --42.113.154.63 (talk) 16:34, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Homo floresiensis
I removed entries for Homo floresiensis; as per its main article, "Whether the specimens represent a new species is a controversial issue within the scientific community." -- Limulus 21:59, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Well a more important reason to remove it is that even if it is a new species it is not an ancestor to humans. It is a seperate descendent from something between australopithecus and ergaster.  So it should not be in the list for the same reason that Neanderthal should not be on the list.  Qed (talk) 20:46, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that Neanderthal should not be on the list, but it is. "(Ancient) homo sapiens" is equated with Neanderthal which is plain wrong. Neanderthalensis is another subspecies that only contributed to ~3% of the genome of part of the modern human population. Certainly sapiens sapiens is not a subset of Neanderthal as the table suggests.--176.7.56.18 (talk) 07:20, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I concur with this. My best suggestion is to have the second column of the Species line read "Homo sapiens" and the third read "Anatomically modern humans": in the Subspecies line we could then have the third column read "Extant modern humans".
 * To accommodate the Neanderthals reference we could perhaps introduce a preceding line between Genus and Species – "Subgenus" is a valid term but I don't know if it's usually used in this particular context – whose third column reads Archaic humans, a term which is used to cover H neanderthalensis, H rhodesiensis, H Heidelbergensis etc, but this does not sit well with the preceding column entry of "Humans", so that could be changed to "Genus Homo". The fourth column figures might need rechecking. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.211.130.104 (talk) 20:15, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Making an article about the timeline of hominin evolution would allow including all the branches and twigs of the hominin clade. Many hominin (and pre-hominim) fossils that are not of modern humans are probably off the human line to some degree, since only a small percentage of hominins alive at any given time would have been direct ancestors of modern humans. Going farther back in time, we don't know whether Tiktaalik for example is a direct ancestor of humans either. It may have been on a side branch that died out. For all we know, Tiktaalik may be no more closely related to the actual common ancestor of humans and amphibians than Homo floresiensis is related to its actual common ancestor with modern humans. Since we will never have a complete list of all species that have ever existed, much less which ones left daughter species and which ones were terminal species, the sparse sampling that we do have is more likely than not to only show us species that are related offshoots of the actual transitional species. --Teratornis (talk) 00:18, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Flatworm
Does the image at 550mya really show a flatworm, because that article apparently describes something a lot more complex-looking that appeared during the Permian. – filelakeshoe (t / c) &#xF0F6;  23:29, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Humans 300,000 years old?
Recent news => humans evolved 300,000 years ago, much earlier than the 200,000 years ago thought previously? - relevant discussions at the following => "Talk:Human" - AND - "Talk:Homo sapiens" - AND - "Talk:Anatomically modern human" - AND - "Talk:Jebel Irhoud" - AND - "Template talk:Human timeline" - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 14:46, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Humans exited Africa 270,000 years ago?
Somewhat related - evidence suggests that Homo sapiens may have migrated from Africa as early as 270,000 years ago, much earlier than the 70,000 years ago thought previously - Comments Welcome - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 15:16, 5 July 2017 (UTC)
 * And this source. Doug Weller  talk 19:21, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

600 kya and footprints & lack of any sources in this timeline when created
The 600 kya was left over from a merge to an 800-500 ka section, which is reasonable. The problem is that the original statement about footprints isn't in ths source, not surprising as it never was meant to be. The very first version of this article, in 2005, said:

355 kYA Three 1.5m tall Homo heidelbergensis scrambled down Roccamonfina volcano in Southern Italy, leaving the earliest Homo footprints, which were made before the powdery volcanic ash solidified.

It wasn't sourced. In fact, nothing in the original article was sourced, which makes me worry for the current state of the article. User:Dbachmann, how much of this article can we trust? Doug Weller talk 15:39, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I generally like this article, and most of the information is copy-pasted from linked articles, but of course it violates WP:CITE as it stands, each section needs a decent reference. But we can be reasonable with it, most of the information is correct, no need to litter it with hundreds of cn tags, we should start with tagging or referencing the most specific claims, such as the footprints one. This is not a problem, it's just a matter of ten seconds on google and then entering the reference here, in this case, the Wikipedia page is Ciampate del Diavolo, the reference is  and the correct date is not 600 ka but  385–325 ka 95% CI.
 * --dab (𒁳) 08:00, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

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Eliminating confusion: 4,100 million or 4.100 million or 4.1 billion years? Is this the USA or the international english SI units wikipedia?
I think that if you see 4,100 - with 3 numbers behind the comma - shows that this is the USA way of writing 4 thousand and 100, because most of the time accuracy - like in currencies - is noted up to 2 numbers after the unit. So if you'd see 4,10 - this would hint an American that he's probably looking at a European / SI way of writing and that it is not 410 but 4.10. Anyway, wouldn't it be good to put e.g. between parenthesis we're talking about 4.1 billion years ago? What is the convention for writing numbers in the wikipedia? I thought it was using SI units and I thought that it would be not 4,100 million but 4.1 billion or 4.100 million years ago? Help Thy, SvenAERTS (talk) 13:56, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Because of the different number writing conventions, having a thousands separator in a number results in this sort of ambiguity. The other inconsistency on the page is the use of Ga, Ma, and ka in the later tables while the first table uses this heading of "Millions of years ago". I would be in favor of either eliminating the thousands separator for these 4-digit numbers or using the Ga, Ma, ka convention throughout. Note that according to WP:DECIMAL and WP:DIGITS, the standard is to use a decimal point, never a comma, for the decimal separator and that a comma is used as a thousands separator but is optional for 4-digit numbers.
 * Is this more of a content question than a "how to edit" question? I'm turning off the help batsignal.  — jmcgnh (talk) (contribs) 01:26, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

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