Are they a part of our ancestral evolutionary line or a dead end?

They also cast most australopithecines out of the human ancestral line.

Many of them had changed little since his ancestral line left the water; others were quite new.

This is because when ancestral lines are traced back through time, the number of ancestors doubles with each generation.

The two appear to have diverged from a common ancestral line a few thousand years ago.

The scientists said it was too early to know whether the skull represented a species on a direct ancestral line to humans.

There are even those who speculate that we may have something birdlike in our ancestral line.

In that case, it might even be a more direct ancestral line leading to modern humans.

Many were likely our "cousins", they developed away from our ancestral line.

This particular pattern, however, first occurred as a mutation somewhere along the ancestral line leading toward man and has been passed on ever since.