New instrument dates old skeleton—'Little Foot' 3.67 million years old

Phys.Org ^ | 04-01-2015 | Provided by Purdue University

[Red Badger]

PinGGG!.............

[mountainlion]

So a monkey or crow collects shiny rocks and they become tools?

[Ken H]

Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

[Red Badger]

After 2 million years, yes...............

[JimRed]

So a monkey or crow collects shiny rocks and they become tools?

No, but a sentient being notices that a broken rock has a useful sharp edge, and breaks more rocks to create more useful sharp edges, what we call tools.

All part of God's wonderful creation.

[Alas Babylon!]

Wow! And amazing! 3 & 1/2 million years!

It seems to me that the great drying out from the Miocene to the Pliocene really diversified the proto-homininds! I wonder how many better adapted to the treetop apes species died out while this was going on? At one time, the great equatorial tropical forests girdled the whole globe, from West Africa, across the Middle East, India and into to all of East Asia, and most of Southern North and Northern South America.

[Red Badger]

Good thing they had Global Warming back then!...................

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Red Badger.

[BenLurkin]

Something about that “skull” doesn’t look right.

Is it a plaster cast of the skull(might explain why it has a neck)?

The creature had very modern looking teeth (and in remarkably good condition) but a ridiculously small cranium.

[Monkey Face]

And I’ll be a Monkey Face!

[Alas Babylon!]

Yeah, back then Global Warming was a good thing, because the Ice Ages started shortly afterward!

From Wikipedia:

The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3–3 mya) was 2–3 °C higher than today, global sea level 25 m higher and the Northern hemisphere ice sheet was ephemeral before the onset of extensive glaciation over Greenland that occurred in the late Pliocene around 3 Ma. The formation of an Arctic ice cap is signaled by an abrupt shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic and North Pacific ocean beds. Mid-latitude glaciation was probably underway before the end of the epoch. The global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred on the disappearance of forests and the spread of grasslands and savannas.

[SunkenCiv]

Let’s see how *your* fossil remains look after 3.67 million years. :’)

[lecram]

Good article on dating technique used:

http://www.icr.org/article/dubious-radiogenic-places-u-th-pb-mineral-dating-d

[M Kehoe]

Phys.Org out of Purdue? Why not Anthro.org out of Purdue?

Just sayn.

5.56mm

[discostu]

Did they use them to do something that couldn’t be done (or was much harder) without them? Then yes. That’s all a tool is, it’s an object not directly a part of a task makes the task possible or easier.

[SunkenCiv]

Keep your junk science links to yourself.

[mountainlion]

One mans junk science is another’s reality. I think global warming, evolution, and such are junk science but thee are some pearls of knowledge. I don't tell others to shut up.

[MaxMax]

A tree falls and chips a rock while the monkey in the tree dies.
then a floods comes and covers it up until now.
WALA, tools.

[tumblindice]

Looks like Sam Losco.