Fossils Shed New Light on Human Origins

[bcarroll]

After 15 years of rumors, researchers in the U.S. and Ethiopia on Thursday made public fossils from a 4.4-million-year-old human forebearer they say reveals that our earliest ancestors were more modern than scholars assumed and deepens the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from today's apes and chimpanzees.

The highlight of the extensive fossil trove is a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind's beginnings.

An international research team led by paleoanthropologist Tim White at the University of California, Berkeley, unveiled remains from 36 males, females and young of an ancient prehuman species called Ardipithecus ramidus, unearthed in the Awash region of Ethiopia since 1994. The creatures take their scientific name from the word for root in the local Afar language.

"It is not a chimp and it is not human," said Dr. White. "It gives us a new perspective on our origins."

Already, the discoveries have experts reworking the human pedigree. "They are extraordinary fossils," said anthropologist Alan Walker at Pennsylvania State University, who wasn't part of the project. They undoubtedly will shape debates about human origins for years to come, as scholars argue whether these creatures should be counted among our most ancient direct ancestors or cataloged as an intriguing dead-end.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1254...Tabs%3Darticle

[Hank Scorpio]

This guy makes me think Planet of the Apes.

[Micronian]

Certainly an interesting find.

It's nice that it argues against the traditional consensus that humans evolved from a chimpanzee-like animal (as this fossil predates the rise of the "great apes").

But...that all it does. it refutes an old, elementary, idea.

what's interesting about the fossil though is that it has very long, slender, fingers. They were definitely not made for climbing trees, more for rummaging around soft ground; picking, like the beak of a crane. That's pretty much all you can say: it wasn't a tree dweller. Anything other than that, as far as I'm concerned, is just 'fluff' for the masses.

Personally, any land dwelling animal that cannot run well, cannot "think on their feet" by using tools, and does not have strong teeth, is dead meat to all kinds of predators. It might explain why, a million years later, "Lucy" still has the same genus (at least, according to the scientists).

[Zephyr]

That is interesting. Especially this:

Instead, the new finds show that what seems most ancient about modern chimps and apes -- such as canine fangs, long limbs with hooked fingers for swinging through trees, and hands designed for knuckle-walking -- may actually be more recent developments, the researchers said. In that sense, the human hand today actually may be the more primitive appendage, they said.
"It is the chimps and gorillas that have been evolving like crazy in terms of limbs and locomotion, not hominids," said Kent State University anthropologist Owen Lovejoy, a senior scientist on the research team. "We took a different tack. We went social."

I'm interested in this kind of thing, so I skimmed the comments to the article. Oof. Painful with a capital P.

Originally Posted by Micronian

Personally, any land dwelling animal that cannot run well, cannot "think on their feet" by using tools, and does not have strong teeth, is dead meat to all kinds of predators. It might explain why, a million years later, "Lucy" still has the same genus (at least, according to the scientists).

I'm not sure what you mean. Lucy was an Australopithecus. These are Ardipithecus.

[Micronian]

I'm not sure what you mean. Lucy was an Australopithecus. These are Ardipithecus.

You're right. I stand corrected. It makes more sense this way. It makes more sense that this species was an evolutionary dead end.

[SilentLoner]

Pretty neat find.