Free Republic

Recreating the musculature of the leg and pelvis, the imagery supports the supposition that this part-time tree-dwelling hominin walked completely erect, like humans, but more than three million years earlier.Starting with human MRI and CT scans to map muscle pathways, Wiseman next focused on virtual reconstructions of Lucy's bones and joints, and then married up cues from muscle "scarring" on the bones.The resulting model shows how Lucy was capable of upright, erect locomotion but also possessed powerful leg muscles that facilitated her species' half-land, half-arboreal lifestyle. Researchers believe the extra muscle power in the legs – 74% of the total...

New evidence suggests that the famous fossilised human ancestor dubbed "Lucy" by scientists died falling from a great height - probably out of a tree. CT scans have shown injuries to her bones similar to those suffered by modern humans in similar falls. The 3.2 million-year-old hominin was found on a treed flood plain, making a branch her most likely final perch. It bolsters the view that her species - Australopithecus afarensis - spent at least some of its life in the trees.

More than 3 million years ago, our adult human ancestors were walking on two feet and didn't have the option of a fashionable baby sling to carry their kids around in. Instead, Australopithecus afarensis toddlers had a special grasping toe that helped them hold on to their mothers and escape into the trees, reports a study published July 4 in Science Advances. The evidence comes from DIK-1-1 — a relatively complete 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of a 2.5- to 3-year-old female Australopithecus afarensisdiscovered in Dikika, Ethiopia. The skeleton, nicknamed Selam — after the word for peace in Ethiopia's official language of...

The researchers trace the fossil record, which illustrates a timeline placing multiple species overlapping in time and geographic space. Their insights spur further questions about how these early human ancestors were related and shared resources... The 1974 discovery of Australopithecus afarensis, which lived from 3.8 to 2.9 million years ago, was a major milestone in paleoanthropology that pushed the record of hominins earlier than 3 million years ago and demonstrated the antiquity of human-like walking. Scientists have long argued that there was only one pre-human species at any given time before 3 million years ago that gave rise to another...

Finds Challenge Ideas about Who Were the First Toolmakers Scientists working in the desert badlands of northwestern Kenya have found stone tools dating back 3.3 million years, long before the advent of modern humans, and by far the oldest such artifacts yet discovered. The tools, whose makers may or may not have been some sort of human ancestor, push the known date of such tools back by 700,000 years; they also may challenge the notion that our own most direct ancestors were the first to bang two rocks together to create a new technology. The discovery is the first evidence...

Researchers working in Kenya's archaeologically prolific Lake Turkana region claim to have uncovered a set of 3.3-million-year-old stone tools. That's 700,000 years older than the previous record, and predates evidence for the evolutionary origins of the genus Homo by half a million years. Above: A satellite image of Lake Turkana, where the stone tools – and many other artifacts and fossils of human ancestors – have been recovered NPR's Chris Joyce reports on the findings of Stony Brook University archaeologist Sonia Harmand and her colleagues, which were announced Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society in San Francisco:...

September 20, 2006 · Scientists in Ethiopia have discovered the skeleton of a 3.3 million years old child, the oldest child fossil on record. The fossil is known as the Dikika child, after the region where it was found. Though not a human, the apelike creature could walk upright. The child is from the same species as the famous fossil Lucy, which was also discovered in Ethiopia over 30 years ago. It was probably female, and about three when it died. The child lay within a sandstone tomb for over 3 million years. Six years ago, an Ethiopian scientist saw...

Despite the ability to walk upright, early relatives of humanity represented by the famed "Lucy" fossil likely spent much of their time in trees, remaining very active climbers, researchers say. Humans are unique among living primates in that walking bipedally -- on two feet -- is humans' chief mode of locomotion. This upright posture freed their hands up for using tools, one of the key factors behind humans' domination of the planet. Among the earliest known relatives of humanity definitely known to walk upright was Australopithecus afarensis, the species including the famed 3.2-million-year-old "Lucy." Australopithecines are the leading candidates for...

The 3.3-million-year-old fossilised remains of a human-like child have been unearthed in Ethiopia's Dikika region. The female bones are from the species Australopithecus afarensis , which is popularly known from the adult skeleton nicknamed "Lucy". Scientists are thrilled with the find, reported in the journal Nature. They believe the near-complete remains offer a remarkable opportunity to study growth and development in an important extinct human ancestor. The skeleton was first identified in 2000, locked inside a block of sandstone. It has taken five years of painstaking work to free the bones. "The Dikika fossil is now revealing many secrets about...

A sage once said, "It's not what you know you don't know that's the problem; it's what you don't know that you don't know." When Charles Darwin advanced his theory of biological evolution, there was a lot of biology he didn't know. Some of it he recognized. But there was much he never even thought about. During the 150 years since then, scientific advance has yielded important understanding about life's origin, history and characteristics. These accomplishments provide the framework for modern biology. Even more, they are causing scientists to question his theory. Learning what scientists know will equip Christians with...

3.3 million years ago, a three year old girl died in present day Ethiopia, in an area called Dikika. Though a baby, she provides researchers with a unique account of our past, as would a grandmother. Her completeness, antiquity, and age at death combine make this find unprecedented in the history of paleoanthropology and open many new research avenues to investigate into the infancy of early human ancestors. The extraordinary discovery reported this week in the scientific journal Nature, was found in north-eastern Ethiopia, by a paleoanthropological research team led by Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute in...

No more love for Lucy? Ryan Jaroncyk For over the last 30 years, the supposedly 3 . 2 Ma old Australopithecus afarensis specimen known as ‘Lucy’ has been boldly proclaimed as the ancestor of all humanity in magazines, television shows, books, newspapers and museums. However, Tel Aviv University anthropologists have published a study casting serious doubt on Lucy’s role as mankind’s ape ancestor.1 Based on a comparative analysis of jaw bones in living and extinct primates, researchers concluded that Lucy and members of her kind should be ‘placed as the beginning of the branch that evolved in parallel to ours.’...