• Question: do you know anything about the life span of Homo sapiens(evolution turms not individual life span)?

    Asked by mattsid1 to Betul, Bridget, Ceri-Wyn, Laurel, Maria on 20 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Bridget Waller

      Bridget Waller answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Well, the human line split from an ancestral ape (an ancestor shared with chimpanzees) about 5 million years ago. Since then there have been many species of hominid, some existing at the same time, and then very recently (only about 100,000 years ago) Homo sapiens dominated the planet and spread out everywhere! Now there is only us.

    • Photo: Laurel Fogarty

      Laurel Fogarty answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      I’m not really sure about how long we will survive. We are not doing ourselves any favours by destroying the environment we need to live in though!! The average lifespan of a species is apparently about 1 million years so we have a while left I would say!

    • Photo: Ceri-Wyn Thomas

      Ceri-Wyn Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      On average most mammal species have a ‘life span’ of about 1 million years- so we could have lots and lots of time left to enjoy being a species 😉
      However, this is just an average and the life span of a species can be dependant upon many factors so it’s a difficult thing to predict.

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