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Our Earliest Ancestor

Lucy had a relative.

Primitive Human Ancestor Shared Lucy's World
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... tml?ref=hp
by Ann Gibbons on 28 March 2012, 1:05 PM | 0 Comments

Right foot. These fossil foot bones show there were at least two different ways to walk upright 3 million to 4 million years ago.
Credit: Yohannes Haile-Selassie, © The Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Lucy was not alone. The discovery of a remarkably rare partial foot from an ancient primate suggests that more than one kind of human ancestor walked upright in Africa when Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was alive. The primitive traits in this 3.4-million-year-old partial right foot also show that there was more than one way for early human ancestors to walk upright for at least a million years, according to a new study.

Ever since the discovery of Lucy's species in 1974, she has been considered a prime candidate for a direct human ancestor. Unlike earlier apes, Lucy walked fully upright, even though her brain and body weren't much bigger than a chimp's. This showed researchers that bipedal walking was a key trait of humans and our ancestors, the group called hominins—but not of living apes and their ancestors.

Researchers have long wondered if other upright walking species shared the Rift Valley of Africa with Lucy, particularly after they discovered that several types of hominins were alive at the same time after A. afarensis disappeared 3 million years ago. Paleoanthropologists have found the bones and teeth of hundreds of individuals of A. afarensis from between 3 million and 4 million years ago. But in that time period, only one other potential hominin, Kenyanthropus platyops, has turned up, and its skull was so badly crushed that researchers disagree whether it represents Lucy's kind or a new species.

Meanwhile, scientists who study the evolution of walking have had to make do with only a few glimpses of ancient feet from this time because the foot's delicate bones are rarely preserved. Most agree that Lucy's foot and mode of walking were already quite modern, thanks to a few 3.2-million-year-old foot bones from A. afarensis adults, a 3.3-million-year-old infant, and 3.7-million-year-old footprints in Tanzania, thought to be made by the same species.

So the discovery of eight ancient bones from another foot is "a really important step in our evolution of the human gait," says paleoanthropologist Brian Richmond of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who is not a co-author.

Found protruding out of the eroding sandstone at Burtele, in the central Afar region of Ethiopia just 45 kilometers north of Lucy's homeland, the bones provide hard evidence that two different hominins walked upright in two different ways 3.4 million years ago. The six lateral toe bones have traits that indicate they were used to walk upright, making the joint between the bones of the foot and toes (the metatarsophalangeal joint) flexible enough that the toes could be used to push off the ground.

But this foot also has primitive traits. It lacks an arch and has an opposable, or grasping, big toe, like living apes, says Yohannes Haile-Selassie, a paleoanthropologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio and the lead author of the new study, which appears online today in Nature. These traits make the foot more similar to those of ancient apes and an earlier upright walker, Ardipithecus ramidus (aka "Ardi"), which lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia, than to Lucy's foot. In fact, co-author Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, says that when Haile-Selassie first showed him the toe bone, "I said, 'It's another Ardi.' " When Haile-Selassie told him it was a million years younger than Ardi, Latimer said, "No, that can't be!"

These primitive traits in an upright walker suggest that the new foot might represent a late-surviving remnant of Ardipithecus, says Haile-Selassie. He declines to name the species, though, because no teeth or skull bones were found to help identify the foot's species. Whatever its name, others agree that the foot is unexpectedly primitive for 3.4 million years ago: "I would have expected such a foot from a much older hominin, not one that overlapped with A. afarensis, which has a much more derived foot than this thing," says paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva of Boston University, who is not a member of Haile-Selassie's team.

The anatomy also suggests that although this hominin walked upright, it moved awkwardly because of the grasping big toe. It could not run upright or venture far from the trees where it likely took shelter at night, says Latimer. "This foot, therefore, provides some of the best evidence that there were different experiments in bipedalism going on during this time in human evolution," says DeSilva.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... tml?ref=hp
 
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More evidence for Asia, not Africa, as the source of earliest anthropoid primates
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-evidence-a ... liest.html
June 4th, 2012 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

An international team of researchers has announced the discovery of Afrasia djijidae, a new fossil primate from Myanmar that illuminates a critical step in the evolution of early anthropoids—the group that includes humans, apes, and monkeys. The 37-million-year-old Afrasia closely resembles another early anthropoid, Afrotarsius libycus, recently discovered at a site of similar age in the Sahara Desert of Libya. The close similarity between Afrasia and Afrotarsius indicates that early anthropoids colonized Africa only shortly before the time when these animals lived. The colonization of Africa by early anthropoids was a pivotal step in primate and human evolution, because it set the stage for the later evolution of more advanced apes and humans there. The scientific paper describing the discovery appears today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For decades, scientists thought that anthropoid evolution was rooted in Africa. However, more recent fossil discoveries in China, Myanmar, and other Asian countries have rapidly altered scientific opinion about where this group of distant human ancestors first evolved. Afrasia is the latest in a series of fossil discoveries that are overturning the concept of Africa as the starting point for anthropoid primate evolution.

"Not only does Afrasia help seal the case that anthropoids first evolved in Asia, it also tells us when our anthropoid ancestors first made their way to Africa, where they continued to evolve into apes and humans," says Chris Beard, Carnegie Museum of Natural History paleontologist and member of the discovery team that also included researchers from Myanmar, Thailand, and France. Beard is renowned for his extensive work on primate evolution and anthropoid origins. "Afrasia is a game-changer because for the first time it signals when our distant ancestors initially colonized Africa. If this ancient migration had never taken place, we wouldn't be here talking about it."

Timing is everything

Paleontologists have been divided over exactly how and when early Asian anthropoids made their way from Asia to Africa. The trip could not have been easy, because a more extensive version of the modern Mediterranean Sea called the Tethys Sea separated Africa from Eurasia at that time. While the discovery of Afrasia does not solve the exact route early anthropoids followed in reaching Africa, it does suggest that the colonization event occurred relatively recently, only shortly before the first anthropoid fossils are found in the African fossil record.

Myanmar's 37-million-year-old Afrasia is remarkable in that its teeth closely resemble those of Afrotarsius libycus, a North African primate dating to about the same time. The four known teeth of Afrasia were recovered after six years of sifting through tons of sediment near Nyaungpinle in central Myanmar. This locality occurs in the middle Eocene Pondaung Formation, where the same international research team discovered Ganlea megacanina, an influential fossil described in 2009 that helped solidify the presence of early anthropoid primates in Asia.

Details of tooth shape in the Asian Afrasia and the North African Afrotarsius fossils indicate that these animals probably ate insects. The size of their teeth suggests that in life these animals weighed around 3.5 ounces (100 g), roughly the size of a modern tarsier.

Because of the complicated structure of mammalian teeth, paleontologists often use them as fingerprints to reconstruct how extinct species are related to each other and their modern relatives. These similarities provide strong evidence that Afrasia's Asian cousins colonized North Africa only shortly before the appearance of Afrotarsius in the African fossil record. If Asian anthropoids had arrived in North Africa earlier, there would have been time for more differences to evolve between Afrasia and Afrotarsius. The close similarity in age and anatomy shared by the two species makes Afrasia a touchstone in the quest to date the spread of anthropoid primates from Asia to Africa.

"For years we thought the African fossil record was simply bad," says Professor Jean-Jacques Jaeger of the University of Poitiers in France, the team leader and a Carnegie Museum research associate. "The fact that such similar anthropoids lived at the same time in Myanmar and Libya suggests that the gap in early African anthropoid evolution is actually real. Anthropoids didn't arrive in Africa until right before we find their fossils in Libya."

Implications for future research

The search for the origin of early anthropoids—and, by extension, early human ancestors—is a focal point of modern paleoanthropology. The discovery of Afrasia shows that one lineage of early anthropoids colonized Africa around 37???? million years ago, but the diversity of early anthropoids known from the Libyan site that produced Afrotarsius libycus hints that the true picture was more complicated. These other Libyan fossil anthropoids may be the descendants of one or more additional Asian colonists, because they don't appear to be specially related to Afrasia and Afrotarsius. Fossil evidence of evolutionary divergence—when a species divides to create new lineages—is critical data for researchers in evolution. The groundbreaking discovery of the relationship between Asia's Afrasia and North Africa's Afrotarsius is an important benchmark for pinpointing the date at which Asian anthropoids colonized Africa.

"Groundbreaking research like this underscores the vitality of modern natural history museums," says Sam Taylor, director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. "Research like this can only be sustained by the irreplaceable collections, curatorial expertise, and scientific infrastructure that natural history museums provide. At the same time, cutting-edge science like this revitalizes our museum's educational programs and propels its mission."

"Reconstructing events like the colonization of Africa by early anthropoids is a lot like solving a very cold case file," says Beard. "Afrasia may not be the anthropoid who actually committed the act, but it is definitely on our short list of prime suspects."

More information: “A new middle Eocene primate from Myanmar and the initial anthropoid colonization of Africa,” by Yaowalak Chaimanee et al. PNAS, 2012.

Provided by Carnegie Museum of Natural History
 
Early Human Ancestor, Australopithecus Sediba, Fossils Discovered in Rock
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 162744.htm

This is the tooth of a hominid embedded in a rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of "Karabo", the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the Malapa Site in the Cradle of Humankind in 2009. (Credit: University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

ScienceDaily (July 12, 2012) — Scientists from the Wits Institute for Human Evolution based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have just announced the discovery of a large rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of 'Karabo', the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the Malapa Site in the Cradle of Humankind in 2009.

Professor Lee Berger, a Reader in Palaeoanthropology and the Public Understanding of Science at the Wits Institute for Human Evolution, will make the announcement at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai, China on 13 July 2012.

"We have discovered parts of a jaw and critical aspects of the body including what appear to be a complete femur (thigh bone), ribs, vertebrae and other important limb elements, some never before seen in such completeness in the human fossil record," says Berger. "This discovery will almost certainly make Karabo the most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered. We are obviously quite excited as it appears that we now have some of the most critical and complete remains of the skeleton, albeit encased in solid rock. It's a big day for us as a team and for our field as a whole."

The remains are invisible to the casual observer and are entrenched in a large rock about one metre in diameter. It was discovered almost three years ago, but lay unnoticed in the Wits laboratories until early last month. Prof. Berger and his wife Jackie Smilg, a radiologist at the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, who is conducting her PhD on the CT scanning of fossil material embedded in rock, scanned the large rock in a state of the art CT scanner.

Berger added that negotiations had begun with the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom and the Smithsonian in Washington. "We have already donated casts of Australopithecus sediba to these three institutions, amongst others," says Berger.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of the Witwatersrand.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 162744.htm
 
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Primates were always tree-dwellers
Rare ankle bone fossil of oldest-known primate suggests it was arboreal.
http://www.nature.com/news/primates-wer ... rs-1.11423
Matt Kaplan
22 October 2012

The earliest primates seemed to have ankles well suited for life in trees.
D. BOYER/DUKE UNIVERSITY

Primates love to climb and most make their homes high up in the branches of trees, yet when this habit started has been a contentious issue. Now, the discovery of some ankle bones is making it look likely that primates were arboreal from the very beginning.

The earliest primate, Purgatorius, lived around 65 million years ago and is well known from the same fossil beds in Montana that yield tyrannosaurs just a few metres deeper down. Numerous fossils of the genus have been found but, as is typical with mammals, they have all been teeth that survived owing to the presence of protective enamel. The teeth have provided enough information for palaeontologists to say that the animals ate insects and plants, but have yielded little information on where the creatures lived. The ankle bones change that.

Found in several museum trays of unidentified bones collected from the Garbani Channel fossil location in Montana by field crews led by William Clemens at the University of California, Berkeley, the ankle bones are the right size for pairing with all of the teeth that have been collected in the same area and look a lot like the ankles of later primates. These features led Stephen Chester at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Jonathan Bloch at the University of Florida in Gainsville, the palaeontologists who found the bones, to identify them as belonging to Purgatorius. They presented their findings at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Raleigh, North Carolina, last week.

Other palaeontologists generally agree with their assessment. “I buy it. These guys certainly know their morphology,” says palaeontologist Robert Anemone at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

“The anatomy of these specimens certainly matches that of known Paleocene primates, but a skull or a full skeleton would tell us so much more,” adds palaeontologist Kenneth Rose at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Primate or not, the ankle bones suggest considerable flexibility. “This animal’s foot clearly had a wide range of motion,” explains Chester. The presence of such a wide range of motion is important because it is a crucial feature that allows tree-dwellers to readily adjust their feet to the precarious, and often uneven, branches. Moreover, the trait is found almost exclusively in arboreal animals.

“We really think this closes the question of where the first primates were living,” says Chester. Yet why they lived in trees is still being explored.

“They weren’t being chased up there by dinosaurs. They had teeth that were well adapted to eating plants, so the obvious argument to make is that they were going after food,” says Anemone.

The team behind the identification of the fossils point out that flowering plants went through a period of major diversification just when Purgatorius was emerging. “We think there is a connection here between primates and plant evolution, with fruits playing a role in luring them up,” says Bloch. Proving that point is going to take many more Purgatorius fossils, but if there is one thing the team is not short of, it is bones.

“We’ve still got an immense collection of unidentified bones to sort through,” says Clemens.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11423

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http://www.nature.com/news/primates-wer ... rs-1.11423
 
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Handaxes of 1.7 Million Years Ago: 'Trust Rather Than Lust' Behind Fine Details
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 075756.htm

Handaxe nicknamed 'Excalibur' from Atapuerca, northern Spain, which appears to be the earliest deliberate grave offering, 0.5 million years old. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of York)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2012) — Trust rather than lust is at the heart of the attention to detail and finely made form of handaxes from around 1.7 million years ago, according to a University of York researcher.

Dr Penny Spikins, from the Department of Archaeology, suggests a desire to prove their trustworthiness, rather than a need to demonstrate their physical fitness as a mate, was the driving force behind the fine crafting of handaxes by Homo erectus/ergaster in the Lower Palaeolithic period.

Dr Spikins said: "We sometimes imagine that early humans were self-centred, and if emotional at all, that they would have been driven by their immediate desires. However, research suggests that we have reason to have more faith in human nature, and that trust played a key role in early human societies. Displaying trust not lust was behind the attention to detail and finely made form of handaxes."

The 'trustworthy handaxe theory' is explained in an article in World Archaeology and contrasts sharply with previous claims that finely crafted handaxes were about competition between males and sexual selection.

Dr Spikins said: "Since their first recovery, the appealing form of handaxes and the difficulty of their manufacture have inspired much interest into the possible 'meaning' of these artefacts. Much of the debate has centred on claims that the attention to symmetrical form and the demonstration of skill would have played a key role in sexual selection, as they would have helped attract a mate eager to take advantage of a clear signal of advantageous genes.

"However, I propose that attention to form is much more about decisions about who to trust; that it can be seen as a gesture of goodwill or trustworthiness to others. The attention to detail is about showing an ability to care about the final form, and by extension, people too.

"In addition, overcoming the significant frustrations of imposing form on stone displays considerable emotional self-control and patience, traits needed for strong and enduring relationships."

Handaxes, or bifaces, appeared around 1.7 million years ago in Africa and spread throughout the occupied world of Africa, Europe and western Asia, functioning primarily as butchery implements. Handaxe form remained remarkably similar for more than a million years.

Dr Spikins said: "Trust is essential to all our relationships today, and we see the very beginnings of the building blocks of trust in other apes. The implication that it was an instinct towards trust which shaped the face of stone tool manufacture is particularly significant to our understanding of Lower Palaeolithic societies. It sets a challenge for research into how our emotions, rather than our complex thinking skills, made us human.

"As small vulnerable primates in risky environments where they faced dangerous predators our ancestors needed to be able to depend on each other to survive -- displaying our emotional capacities was part of forming trusting relationships with the kind of 'give and take' that they needed."

Dr Spikins points to other higher primates, particularly chimpanzees, as well as modern human hunter-gatherers to back up her theory of trustworthiness.

"Long-term altruistic alliances in both chimpanzees and humans are forged by many small unconscious gestures of goodwill, or acts of altruism, such as soothing those in distress or sharing food," said Dr Spikins.

"As signals of trustworthiness, these contribute to one's reputation, and in hunter-gatherers reputation can be the key to survival, with the most trustworthy hunters being looked after most willingly by the others when they are ill or elderly.

"The form of a handaxe is worth considerable effort, as it may demonstrate trustworthiness not only in its production, but also each time it is seen or re-used, when it might remind others of the emotional reliability of its maker."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of York.

Journal Reference:

Penny Spikins. Goodwill hunting? Debates over the ‘meaning’ of Lower Palaeolithic handaxe form revisited. World Archaeology, 2012; 44 (3): 378 DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2012.725889
 
Fossil of Great Ape Sheds Light On Evolution
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 132100.htm


Following an in-depth examination of an ancient ape, a University of Missouri integrative anatomy expert says the shape of the specimen’s pelvis indicates that it lived near the beginning of the great ape evolution, after the lesser apes had started to develop separately but before the great ape species began to diversify. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Missouri-Columbia)
May 1, 2013 — Researchers who unearthed the fossil specimen of an ape skeleton in Spain in 2002 assigned it a new genus and species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus. They estimated that the ape lived about 11.9 million years ago, arguing that it could be the last common ancestor of modern great apes: chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, gorillas and humans. Now, a University of Missouri integrative anatomy expert says the shape of the specimen's pelvis indicates that it lived near the beginning of the great ape evolution, after the lesser apes had started to develop separately but before the great ape species began to diversify.

Ashley Hammond, a Life Sciences Fellow in the MU Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, is the first to examine the pelvis fragments of the early hominid. She used a tabletop laser scanner attached to a turntable to capture detailed surface images of the fossil, which provided her with a 3-D model to compare the Pierolapithecus pelvis anatomy to living species.

Hammond says the ilium, the largest bone in the pelvis, of the Pierolapithecus catalaunicus is wider than that of Proconsul nyanzae, a more primitive ape that lived approximately 18 million years ago. The wider pelvis may be related to the ape's greater lateral balance and stability while moving using its forelimbs. However, the fingers of the Pierolapithecus catalaunicus are unlike those of modern great apes, indicating that great apes may have evolved differently than scientists originally hypothesized.

"Pierolapithecus catalaunicus seemed to use a lot of upright behaviors such as vertical climbing, but not the fully suspensory behaviors we see in great apes alive today," Hammond said. "Today, chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos and gorillas use forelimb-dominated behaviors to swing below branches, but Pierolapithecus catalaunicus didn't have the long, curved finger bones needed for suspension, so those behaviors evolved more recently."

Hammond suggests researchers continue searching for fossils to further explain the evolution of the great apes in Africa.

"Contrary to popular belief, we're not looking for a missing link," Hammond said. "We have different pieces of the evolutionary puzzle and big gaps between points in time and fossil species. We need to continue fieldwork to identify more fossils and determine how the species are related and how they lived. Ultimately, everything is connected."

The study, "Middle Miocene Pierolapithecus provides a first glimpse into early hominid pelvic morphology," will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. The Department of Pathology and Anatomical Sciences is in the MU School of Medicine. Co-authors included David Alba from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain and the University of Turin in Italy, Sergio Almécija from Stony Brook University in New York, and Salvador Moyà-Solà from the Miquel Crusafont Institute of Catalan Palaeontology at Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Ashley S. Hammond, David M. Alba, Sergio Almécija, Salvador Moyà-Solà. Middle Miocene Pierolapithecus provides a first glimpse into early hominid pelvic morphology. Journal of Human Evolution, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.03.002
 
Early hominins couldn't have heard modern speech

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... peech.html
20:00 13 May 2013 by Colin Barras
For similar stories, visit the Evolution Topic Guide
Our australopith ancestors heard their world differently from modern humans.

Rolf Quam at Binghamton University in New York State and colleagues have discovered rare middle ear bones from two extinct southern African hominins – Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus.

A combination of ape-like and human-like features in the bones indicate some australopiths lacked sensitivity to the midrange frequencies that modern humans use for speech.

"Anthropologists are in general agreement that these early hominins likely did not possess spoken language," says Quam – the new findings back that claim.

His team now plans to use CT scans of the fossils and 3D virtual reconstruction of the ear anatomy to work out more precisely what the world sounded like to our distant ancestors.

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1303375110
 
The first primates quickly evolved a remarkable diversity in the aftermath of the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

New fossil finds from Montana, US, reveal a species so different from others that some scientists now think the first primates evolved when dinosaurs still roamed.

It weighed between 500 and 1500 grams, the size of a large squirrel, but it would have dwarfed other early primates living at the time about 66 million years ago.

"The big surprise is a primate of such large body size that early in primate evolution," says Craig Scott of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, who describes the find in the journal Palaeontology.

Palaeontologists have identified at least three different species of Purgatorius, the earliest known primate, which lived in an area that is now Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana. Their sizes differed, but all were in the range of mice, like the majority of mammals during the age of dinosaurs. ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... IStSDGsWug
 
CURATOR DISCOVERS NEW HUMAN ANCESTOR SPECIES

A new relative joins “Lucy” on the human family tree. An international team of scientists, led by Curator of Physical Anthropology Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie, has discovered a 3.3 to 3.5 million-year-old new human ancestor species. Upper and lower jaw fossils recovered from the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia have been assigned to the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. This hominin lived alongside the famous “Lucy’s” species, Australopithecus afarensis. The species will be described in the May 28, 2015 issue of the international scientific journal Nature.

Lucy’s species lived from 2.9 million years ago to 3.8 million years ago, overlapping in time with the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. The new species is the most conclusive evidence for the contemporaneous presence of more than one closely related early human ancestor species prior to 3 million years ago. The species name “deyiremeda” (day-ihreme-dah) means “close relative” in the language spoken by the Afar people.


Australopithecus deyiremeda differs from Lucy’s species in terms of the shape and size of its thick-enameled teeth and the robust architecture of its lower jaws. The anterior teeth are also relatively small indicating that it probably had a different diet.

“The new species is yet another confirmation that Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, was not the only potential human ancestor species that roamed in what is now the Afar region of Ethiopia during the middle Pliocene,” said lead author and Woranso-Mille project team leader Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie. “Current fossil evidence from the Woranso-Mille study area clearly shows that there were at least two, if not three, early human species living at the same time and in close geographic proximity. ...

https://www.cmnh.org/nature2015
 
New evidence that Lucy, our most famous ancestor, had superstrong arms

You probably know her as Lucy.

Discovered in 1974, wedged into a gully in Ethiopia's Awash Valley, the delicate, diminutive skeleton is both uncannily familiar and alluringly strange. In some ways, the 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus was a lot like us; her hips, feet and long legs were clearly made for walking. But she also had long arms and dexterous curved fingers, much like modern apes that still swing from the trees.

So, for decades scientists have wondered: Who exactly was Lucy? Was she lumbering and land-bound, like us modern humans? Or did she retain some of the ancient climbing abilities that made her ancestors — and our own — champions of the treetops?

A new study suggests she was a little of both: Though her lower limbs were adapted for bipedalism, she had exceptionally strong arm bones that allowed her to haul herself up branches, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal PLoS One.

“This is what makes Lucy so fascinating,” said lead author Christopher Ruff, a biological anthropologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “She had crossed a lot of thresholds on the path to becoming human, but not all of them.” ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...had-super-strong-arms/?utm_term=.3b2362af9599
 
She was a remarkable creature. This is the field that drew me to university as a mature-age student, back in the early 90s before the old tree had branched out. Still a fascinating area of discovery and wonder. Can we envisage a time when genetically reincarnated archaic specimens will live again contemporaneously with moderns?
lucy.png
 
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find
ss-composite-image-2017-5-22-16-37-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.png

An artist's reconstruction of Graecopithecus freybergi, left, with the jawbone and tooth found in Bulgaria and Greece CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
22 MAY 2017 • 7:00PM
The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa.

Currently, most experts believe that our human lineage split from apes around seven million years ago in central Africa, where hominids remained for the next five million years before venturing further afield.

But two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.

The discovery of the creature, named Graecopithecus freybergi, and nicknameded ‘El Graeco' by scientists, proves our ancestors were already starting to evolve in Europe 200,000 years before the earliest African hominid.

An international team of researchers say the findings entirely change the beginning of human history and place the last common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans - the so-called Missing Link - in the Mediterranean region.

At that time climate change had turned Eastern Europe into an open savannah which forced apes to find new food sources, sparking a shift towards bipedalism, the researchers believe.

“This study changes the ideas related to the knowledge about the time and the place of the first steps of the humankind,” said Professor Nikolai Spassov from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

“Graecopithecus is not an ape. He is a member of the tribe of hominins and the direct ancestor of homo.

“The food of the Graecopithecus was related to the rather dry and hard savannah vegetation, unlike that of the recent great apes which are leaving in forests. Therefore, like humans, he has wide molars and thick enamel.

Even more text at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/05/22/europe-birthplace-mankind-not-africa-scientists-find/
 
Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find
ss-composite-image-2017-5-22-16-37-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.png

An artist's reconstruction of Graecopithecus freybergi, left, with the jawbone and tooth found in Bulgaria and Greece CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
22 MAY 2017 • 7:00PM
The history of human evolution has been rewritten after scientists discovered that Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa.

Currently, most experts believe that our human lineage split from apes around seven million years ago in central Africa, where hominids remained for the next five million years before venturing further afield.

But two fossils of an ape-like creature which had human-like teeth have been found in Bulgaria and Greece, dating to 7.2 million years ago.

The discovery of the creature, named Graecopithecus freybergi, and nicknameded ‘El Graeco' by scientists, proves our ancestors were already starting to evolve in Europe 200,000 years before the earliest African hominid.

An international team of researchers say the findings entirely change the beginning of human history and place the last common ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans - the so-called Missing Link - in the Mediterranean region.

At that time climate change had turned Eastern Europe into an open savannah which forced apes to find new food sources, sparking a shift towards bipedalism, the researchers believe.

“This study changes the ideas related to the knowledge about the time and the place of the first steps of the humankind,” said Professor Nikolai Spassov from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

“Graecopithecus is not an ape. He is a member of the tribe of hominins and the direct ancestor of homo.

“The food of the Graecopithecus was related to the rather dry and hard savannah vegetation, unlike that of the recent great apes which are leaving in forests. Therefore, like humans, he has wide molars and thick enamel.

Even more text at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/05/22/europe-birthplace-mankind-not-africa-scientists-find/
They look more like modern North Norfolk teeth to me.
 
More evidence challenging the standard 'out of Africa' / timeline interpretations ... AFAIK This marks the first time Crete has been mentioned as a prehistoric hominid stomping ground ...

Fossil footprints challenge established theories of human evolution
Summary: Newly discovered human-like footprints from Crete may put the established narrative of early human evolution to the test. The footprints are approximately 5.7 million years old and were made at a time when previous research puts our ancestors in Africa -- with ape-like feet. ...

FULL STORY: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170831134221.htm
 
Also posted to the latest FT (359) thread, where this amazing story features on page 16.

Modern-looking hominid footprints found in 5.7 million (yes!) year old strata on Crete.

Here's the New Scientist article on these amazing footprints:

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ints-suggest-we-evolved-in-europe-not-africa/

Unlike FT, NS doesn't call these modern looking, but does make the point that they were left by a bipedal hominid, walking on the soles of the feet and with a well-developed but non-opposable big toe. In this respect, they certainly look more modern than those of the more recent ardipithecus ramidus, who had an opposable big toe. If verified, these prints challenge the traditional out of Africa hypothesis.
Humankind's history just got a helluva lot stranger!
 
I was going to mention that too, the theory seems to be that humanity developed independently in a few places around the globe, not just Africa, and happened to evolve in the same way to create similar races. Sounds unlikely, but there's some proof in Crete. A bit shameful that it also says the investigation was nearly suppressed, too.
 
I was going to mention that too, the theory seems to be that humanity developed independently in a few places around the globe, not just Africa, and happened to evolve in the same way to create similar races. Sounds unlikely, but there's some proof in Crete. A bit shameful that it also says the investigation was nearly suppressed, too.

Exactly right. There is so much political collateral invested in the "we are all African" mantra, that any evidence to the contrary is likely to be met with as much hostility as Copernicus' heliocentric model or, indeed, Darwin's theory.
I await further analysis of this potentially history-rewriting discovery, but reports like this simply remind me why I love Fortean topics!
 
I was going to mention that too, the theory seems to be that humanity developed independently in a few places around the globe, not just Africa, and happened to evolve in the same way to create similar races. Sounds unlikely, but there's some proof in Crete. A bit shameful that it also says the investigation was nearly suppressed, too.


Your last sentence, GNC, does not surprise me in the least mate.
 
The publication rather than the investigation. There's more dogma than there should be. I read a book by an early proponent of plate tectonics, who also mentioned how hard it was at first to even get someone to publish articles.
I was surprised to learn that Per Ahlberg is not my old teacher, turns out Sweden has two paleontologists by that name.
 
If verified, these prints challenge the traditional out of Africa hypothesis.
Humankind's history just got a helluva lot stranger!

I always thought the idea that a single group of Hominids left Africa sounded silly. There would have waves and waves of Hominids leaving Africa, evolving separately in different places, and later intermingling again.

You do not need a single origin point for humans more than you need a single origin point for rabbits.

We need to get rid of the idea that we are somehow a special, single species. We're all mongrels, made up from different ancestors.

That's my theory.
 
I always thought the idea that a single group of Hominids left Africa sounded silly. There would have waves and waves of Hominids leaving Africa, evolving separately in different places, and later intermingling again.

You do not need a single origin point for humans more than you need a single origin point for rabbits.

We need to get rid of the idea that we are somehow a special, single species. We're all mongrels, made up from different ancestors.

That's my theory.
Rabbits do have a single origin point - the Iberian peninsula.
 
Although Michael Cremo does stray rather close to Von Daniken territory at times, he did make some very valid points in "Forbidden Archaeology" about scientific orthodoxy's reluctance to acknowledge any evidence that rocks the boat.
 
Rabbits do have a single origin point - the Iberian peninsula.

I've been to the Iberian Peninsula - it struck me as being slightly larger than a "single point". Besides, common ancestors to both rabbits and hares have been located elsewhere as well.

I think the fallacy is to think if evolution of a species as somehow happening in a straight line from species A to B.
 
Some denizens of Dorset probably still look like these critters.

Fossils of the oldest-known ancestors of most living mammals, including human beings, have been unearthed in southern England.

Teeth belonging to the extinct shrew-like creatures, which scampered at the feet of dinosaurs, were discovered in cliffs on the Dorset coast.

Scientists who identified the specimens say they are the earliest undisputed fossils of mammals belonging to the line that led to humans.

They date back 145 million years.

''Here we have discovered from the Jurassic coast a couple of shrew-like things that are to date unequivocally our earliest ancestors,'' said Dr Steve Sweetman of Portsmouth University, who examined the ancient teeth.

The mammals were tiny, furry creatures that probably emerged under the cover of night. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41889633
 
Detailed paper on the 7.2 million year old Graecopithecus, adding to speculation that hominins first evolved in Europe:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0177127

Given that the Zanclean flood, which created what we think of as the Mediterranean, didn't happen until some 2 million years later, would there have been a solid land mass from Athens (where the Graecopithecus fossil was found) to Africa when Graecopithecus lived?
 
plus ça change...

2.4-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools Turn Up in an Unexpected Place

To the untrained eye, the rock would have looked like any other. But when Mohamed Sahnouni pulled it out of the ground in the summer of 2006, he immediately recognized it as a chopper: a palm-size tool deliberately flaked to create a sharp cutting edge. It looked exactly like something from the so-called Oldowan culture, a style of stone tools that existed between 1.9 and 2.6 million years ago, predate Homo sapiens, and had mainly come from East Africa.

But Sahnouni wasn’t in East Africa. For years, he and his colleagues had been exploring the archaeological site of Ain Boucherit in Algeria’s High Plateaus, just an hour’s drive from the Mediterranean at the continent’s northern edge. This part of the continent has been relatively neglected by archaeologists, and until now, the oldest artifacts from the region were 1.8 million-year-old stone tools that Sahnouni had found at nearby Ain Hanech. But what his team discovered at Ain Boucherit was much older.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/we-found-rocks-in-a-hopeless-place/576967/

We may have to re-write human history. For the third time this week.
 
plus ça change...



https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/we-found-rocks-in-a-hopeless-place/576967/

We may have to re-write human history. For the third time this week.



I wouldn't have recognised it as a chopper, rather, I saw it as a stone bank, or core, for when a bladed instrument is needed.

It's perfect, in that the stone is capable of a concoidal fracture, and there are two corresponding points of impact still visible after all this time.

Beautiful.
 
I wouldn't have recognised it as a chopper, rather, I saw it as a stone bank, or core, for when a bladed instrument is needed.

It's perfect, in that the stone is capable of a concoidal fracture, and there are two corresponding points of impact still visible after all this time.

Beautiful.
It looked more like a core to me as well. But still very cool.
 
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