Which hominin species were the Croods?

To celebrate finishing our human evolution unit bookwork in biology, we have been watching The Croods. We were then tasked with deciding which hominin species The Croods are, and justify why.

Biological evolution

Looking at Grug, the Croods father, he has a low-sloping forehead, prominent brow ridge, and strongly built jaw, all of which are features of the Homo heidelbergensis skull, who lived between 600 and 200 000 years ago. The large fleshy nose and comically large teeth are also an indicator of H. neanderthals.

Efficient bipedal walking was clearly demonstrated by all of the Croods in the film which the H. heidelbergensis was well adapted for, this suggests the Croods weren't ardipithecus ramidus, australopithecus afarenis, australopithecus africanus or paranthropus boisei, who were not fully bipedal.
The Croods hands featured short and straight fingers, opposable thumbs and dextrous fingers, suggesting they fit into the hominin timeline sometime during/after when H. habillis existed. H. habillis had the human-like ability to form precision grips, evident in the Croods when they held objects, small stones, made cave art, etc. 

Cultural evolution
The cultural evolution of the Croods is strong evidence of neanderthilic behaviour, in that like the Croods, neanderthals wore some animal hides as clothing, they were also able to control fire for warmth which was demonstrated by Guy's ability to make fire, eventually Grug's (Grug learning to make fire from Guy is a great example of cultural evolution). One big example of cultural evolution was the Croods consistently making cave art, which is first correlated with the H. neanderthals. 

Language wise, The Croods speak at a very very complex level of modern language, more developed than the neanderthals and more like like H. sapiens, who are able to communicate very very well, are socially coordinated, which the Croods clearly show. They are creative and have the ability to build traps, suggesting a level of complex and abstract thinking, like H. sapiens do. The Croods also domesticated animals by the end of the film, a big indicator of H. sapien behaviour (yet they lacked the agriculture knowledge that actually lead to the domestication of animals in reality). 

Overall looking at the Croods I think they are a mix of H. neanderthals and H. sapiens culturally wise, however, there they show diverse traits of earlier hominins and there are some 'gaps' in their knowledge, eg. not knowing how to make fire, living in caves, etc, yet they are still able to communicate at such a complex level, are wearing clothes, etc. Visually, they have retained a lot of early hominid skull features- low, sloping forehead, large noise, strongly built chins, and were rather short, all features of the H. heidelbergensis. 

To conclude, considering The Croods is an animated film, I don't think it's really going to be all that accurate when it comes to biological/cultural evolution of hominins, but it was still entertaining to watch.