Just heard about this on CBC radio:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/08/tech/main6374925.shtml
Natalia
2 Million-Year-Old Skeletons Reveal Man-Ape Link
By CBSNews
AP) Two skeletons nearly 2 million years old and unearthed in South
Africa are part of a previously unknown species that scientists say fits
the transition from ancient apes to modern humans.
The fossils bear traits from both lineages, and researchers have named
them Australopithecus sediba, meaning "southern ape, wellspring," to
indicate their relation to earlier apelike forms and to features later
found in more modern people.
"These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new
chapter of human evolution and provide a window into a critical period
when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life in the
trees to life on the ground," said Lee R. Berger of South Africa's
University of Witwatersrand. "Australopithecus sediba appears to present
a mosaic of features demonstrating an animal comfortable in both worlds."
*On Sunday's "60 Minutes," correspondent Bob Simon will report on the
discovery, including an interview with Berger.*
Berger and colleagues describe the find in Friday's issue of the journal
Science.
Modern humans, known as Homo sapiens, descended over millions of years
from earlier groups, such as Australopithecus, the best-known example of
which may be the fossil Lucy, who lived about a million years before the
newly discovered A. sediba.
Berger said the newly described fossils date between 1.95 million and
1.78 million years ago.
Some have characterized the find as a "missing link," but that is a
concept no longer accepted by science.
"The 'missing link' made sense when we could take the earliest fossils
and the latest ones and line them up in a row. It was easy back then,"
explained Smithsonian Institution paleontologist Richard Potts. But now
researchers know there was great diversity of branches in the human
family tree rather than a single smooth line.
*Recent stories on evolutionary finds*:
DNA May Point to New Human Ancestor
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/24/tech/main6329488.shtml>
Smithsonian Opens Human Evolution Hall
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/17/tech/main6308467.shtml>
"Hobbit" Skeleton Challenges Evolution
<http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/06/tech/main6273478.shtml>
The two new fossils were found in a pit in what was once a cave, their
bones preserved by hardened sediment that buried them in a flood shortly
after they died, the researchers said.
One was a female estimated to have been in her late 20s or early 30s and
the other was a male age 8 or 9, according to the report. Two more have
been found since this discovery, but Berger declined to detail them.
Berger said their features suggest that the transition from earlier
groups to the Homo genus occurred in very slow stages.
"We can conclude that this new species shares more derived features with
early Homo than any other known australopith species, and thus
represents a candidate ancestor for the genus, or a sister group to a
close ancestor that persisted for some time after the first appearance
of Homo," he said.
But, Berger said, it isn't yet Homo because it "doesn't have the whole
package."
A. sediba could turn out to be a sort of Rosetta stone that helps unlock
the secrets of the development of the genus Homo, Berger said, even if
it turns out to be a side branch.
According to the researchers, A. sediba had an advanced hip bone and
long legs, allowing it to stride like humans, but also had long arms and
powerful hands like an ape. Both the female and the juvenile were about
4 feet 2 inches. The female would have weighed about 73 pounds and the
child about 60 pounds.
"The brain size of the juvenile was between about 26.5 to 27.5 cubic
inches, which is small, but the shape of the brain seems to be more
advanced than that of Australopithecines," the researchers reported. Our
human brains are about 73 to 98 cubic inches.
While the skeletons had traits of both genuses, the researchers said
they chose to classify them conservatively as Australopithecus, rather
than Homo, because of their upper body design and brain size.
Potts, director of the Human Origins Project at the Smithsonian's
National Museum of Natural History, noted that other examples with some
Australopithecine and some Homo traits existed as much as a half-million
years before A. sediba. This particular combination has not been seen
before, he said.
"It's part of the experimentation of evolution," said Potts, who was not
part of Berger's research team. Also, he cautioned, because there are
only two examples there is no way to know if the gene pool died out or
was passed along to others.
Funding for the research was provided by the South African Department of
Science and Technology, the South African National Research Foundation,
the Institute for Human Evolution, the Palaeontological Scientific
Trust, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the AfricaArray Program, the
U.S. Diplomatic Mission to South Africa and Sir Richard Branson, the
billionaire founder of Virgin Group Ltd.
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