What I always find amazing with stuff like this is that I'm here and alive.
Our now human ancestry goes back a few billion years through a variety of
mutations. But in the case of we who are alive today, aren't we lucky that
none of our ancestors died before they procreated. That is how come we are
here.
Ed
________________________________
From: D and N <[email protected]>
To: "RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 8, 2011 7:18:26 PM
Subject: [Futurework] missing link? skeletons, 2 mil. years old
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
Smithsonian Opens Human Evolution Hall
"Hobbit" Skeleton Challenges Evolution
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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