Physical anthropology is a scientific discipline that focuses on the humans, their relation with non-human primates and their extincthominin ancestors. It is part of anthropology that studies the human beings.

This discipline is subdivided in different branches depending on the the type of studies. Although there are different branches, all of them are related with the evolutionary theory and with the human beings and are to understant human morphology and behavior among evolution. The most notable subunit is paleoanthropology that is the study of fossils to understand human evolution. It studies the extinct hominid and other primate species to determine the environment in which humans evolved and how they dispersed among earth.