Second—and this may sound a little insidery, but it’s critical--the way Berger and his collaborators are studying the finds and disseminating what they learn represents a real departure from the cloak-and-dagger manner in which paleoanthropological investigations often proceed. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that A. sediba may just be the most important hominin (modern humans and their extinct relatives) discovery yet. Check. Scientists say fossils are "missing link" in human history, Scientists say fossils are 'missing link' in human history, Aerial video shows vast scale of protest in Poland, Two gay couples in Taiwan make history in military wedding, Lost species of chameleon rediscovered by scientists, 'I'm shaking right now': CNN reporter describes 3 racist attacks within an hour, Germany's Berlin Brandenburg Airport finally takes off, Italian company sees US citizenship applicants quadruple since 2016, Here's what we know about Nice's deadly knife attack, Here's where Trump and Biden stand on Middle East policy, See the moment a powerful earthquake rocked a city in Turkey, Halloween goes virtual in Japan amid pandemic, Hear this Belgian doctor's message to people who won't wear masks, Hear from Nice's mayor after deadly knife attack in church, Multiple casualties in Nice 'terrorist attack,' local mayor says, Australian PM calls Doha airport incident 'unacceptable', The 'Underground Astronauts' in search of new human species, detailed in the journal "Paleoanthropology.
(CNN)Early humans were still swinging from trees two million years ago, scientists have said, after confirming a set of contentious fossils represents a "missing link" in humanity's family tree.
The hominin remains include bones that rarely, if ever, turn up at early hominin sites, and bones often preserved only as fragments have survived intact here. Check, check, check. Early humans were still swinging from trees two million years ago, scientists have said, after confirming a set of contentious fossils represents a "missing link" in humanity's family tree. Baptized Australopithecus sediba, the partially fossilized specimens -- an adult female and a juvenile male -- were found in 2008 in a cavern 40 kilometers (24 miles) from Johannesburg. "The fortuitous discovery of the Malapa fossils and other similarly fortuitous recent finds should be reminders to us all that there is still so much to discover about our evolutionary past," the authors concluded. Maybe you’ll change my mind. However, in the time since the Science paper was published, more remains have been discovered. The discoverer was a nine-year-old boy, Matthew Berger, who was surprised to see human-like teeth protruding from the floor of the cave. The Malapa site is an incredibly high-resolution time capsule. "Australopithecus" means "southern ape," a genus of hominins which lived some 2 million years ago. The finds from Malapa tick pretty much all the boxes on a paleoanthropologist’s wish list. Australopithecus sediba's hands and feet, for instance, show it was spending a good amount of time climbing in trees. ( CC BY-SA 3.0 ) "It is not possible to establish the precise phylogenetic position of Australopithecus sediba in relation to various species assigned to early Homo," writes Berger, a lead author of one of the Science reports. Australopithecus means "southern ape," and is a group that includes the iconic fossil Lucy, while sediba means "wellspring" in the South African language Sotho. Two skeletons of a new hominid species dating back two million years and found in South Africa have shed light on a previously unknown stage in human evolution, scientists said today. But hear me out--and then if you don’t buy it you can tell me why I’m wrong in the comments. Moreover, the hominins represent a range of developmental stages: in addition to the two skeletons, the site has yielded more fragmentary remains of another 4 individuals, including an infant, which will allow the team to study maturation in the species.
I can’t hope to be comprehensive here, but I do want to mention two more aspects of this discovery that add to its importance. "If those events had occurred instead, our science would not know about Au. Thus far, excavations at the site have been preliminary. Au. "The first fossil of Au. Such skin features are themselves clues to the body’s ability to offload excess heat, which became increasingly important as hominins became more active over the course of evolution. Indeed A. sediba’s dizzying mosaic of apelike and humanlike traits is a theme the researchers have emphasized with each new round of papers.
Then there's the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis)--the most complete hominin skeleton known at the time she was found in Ethiopia in 1974 and still the best known to the public—whose anatomy established that hominins walked upright long before brain size expanded, settling a longstanding debate.