Every year adds significant discoveries to our accumulating knowledge of our past. But because the evidence about human origins is much more complex and interesting and full of surprises than anyone guessed, each year has added to the number of questions as well.
There were, as it turned out, many ancestral species rather than a single one, and the human family tree appears tangled and bushy rather a simple trunk-and-branch. Below are typical specimens of hominds that have been discovered since 1891. The first specimens are human species, members of the genus Homo, and they are arranged left to right in chronological order in which they lived.
