Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
Ntional Geographic
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Very exciting news indeed.. At least I am!
anan's first cousin :)
ReplyDeleteWot?? Only one comment on this major bit of news?...Are you still asleep up there or you don't care?... THIS IS HUGE, PEOPLE!!
ReplyDeleteI agree. Haven't gotten around to commenting yet. This is huge.
ReplyDeleteVery very interesting. We only have a very small fraction of species fossiles. Our entire understanding could change with new fossiles.
ReplyDeleteMy feeling is that there might have been several advanced Hominid civilizations over the last millions of years; but that we Hominids kind of messed up each time.