Although the study of human origin is normally focused on the past and finding human evolutionary roots, more and more the question of what will happen next in our development timeline is becoming increasingly important. Through the study of the human fossil record, people can ask and answer questions about themselves as members of the human species, which may also be beneficial in light of where we are going, evolutionarily speaking. It is incorrect to imagine that a species has unlimited evolutionary opportunities ahead of it, as changes can often be limited by the way a species is structured. In addition, earth’s history has been marked by multiple extinction periods, and we seem to be approaching the sixth extinction, in which the rapid growth of human populations have destroyed 50 percent of all species on earth forever. Surely humans will one day become extinct too, but the world will continue to function without mankind, and it is humanity’s duty to be good stewards of this planet, in the meantime.
