The species that you and all other living human beings on this planet belong to is Homo sapiens.

During a time of dramatic climate change 300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. Like
other early humans that were living at this time, they gathered and hunted food, and evolved
behaviors that helped them respond to the challenges of survival in unstable environments.

Anatomically, modern humans can generally be characterized by the lighter build of their skeletons
compared to earlier humans. Modern humans have very large brains, which vary in size from
population to population and between males and females, but the average size is approximately
1300 cubic centimeters. Housing this big brain involved the reorganization of the skull into what is
thought of as "modern" -- a thin-walled, high vaulted skull with a flat and near vertical forehead.
Modern human faces also show much less (if any) of the heavy brow ridges and prognathism of
other early humans. Our jaws are also less heavily developed, with smaller teeth.

Scientists sometimes use the term “anatomically modern Homo sapiens” to refer to members of our
own species who lived during prehistoric times.

History of Discovery:

Unlike every other human species, Homo sapiens does not have a true type specimen. In other
words, there is not a particular Homo sapiens individual that researchers recognize as being the
specimen that gave Homo sapiens its name. Even though Linnaeus first described our species in
1758, it was not customary at that time to designate type specimens. It is rumored that in 1994
paleontologist Robert Bakker formally declared the skull of Edward Drinker Cope as the “lectotype”, a
specimen essentially serving as the type specimen. When Cope, himself a great paleontologist, died
in 1897, he willed his remains to science, and they are held by the University of Pennsylvania. But a
type specimen must be one examined by the original author who names a species, so Cope’s remains
do not qualify.