Abstract: Ancient fossilized members of human beings and those species directly ancestral to modern humans. Fossil humans comprise all prehistoric skeletal remains of humans that are archeologically earlier than the Neolithic (necessarily an imprecise limit, but approximately 10,000 years ago), regardless of the degree of mineralization or fossilization of bone, and regardless of whether the remains may be classed as Homo sapiens (anatomically modern humans) or a more ancient species. In this sense, the term "humans" is used broadly to mean all primates related to living people since the last common ancestor of people and African apes; therefore, this definition encompasses all species included in the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, and Paranthropus (as well as potentially others)