RE-CONSTRUCTION OF HOMO NALEDI
Posted on 09/18/2015 6:52:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Deep inside a cave 30 miles from Johannesburg, South Africa, a tight crevasse guards the passageway to what was, until recently, the grave of at least 15 human-like individuals. Their bones and teeth—more than 1,500 fragments in all—lay in a heap in the bottom of a pitch-black chamber for ages, until two skinny spelunkers with flashlights squeezed into the earth deep enough to find them.
Now those bones are in the hands of scientists who say they belong to a new species of prehumans, with a mix of features typically associated with modern man or fossils belonging to Australopithecina, a group of creatures considered to be ancestors to humans on the evolutionary tree. The scientists, who announced their findings on Thursday, have named the new species Homo naledi, after the local word for “star.”
Depending on their age, the bones could throw into contention some widely accepted views of human evolution—such as the idea that only modern humans were smart enough to methodically bury their dead. The discovery is unusual in that so many fossils were found at a single dig site.
“With every bone in the body represented multiple times, it is already practically the best-known fossil member of our lineage,” said paleoanthropologist Lee Berger in a conference call with reporters. Berger, a University of Witwatersrand professor and National Geographic explorer-in-residence, led the effort to excavate and study the fossils.
But the discovery has already stirred up controversy among researchers, some of whom are unconvinced the fossils represent a new species of hominin—an evolutionary label that includes modern humans and their ancestors.
The definition of “species” is itself somewhat arbitrary. Christoph Zollikofer, an anthropologist at the University of Zurich, doesn’t believe the new fossils have enough “new and unique” features to justify calling them a new species.
“The fossil ensemble fits very well into what is already known as ‘early Homo erectus,’” he told me by email.
There’s no question the fossils, discovered deep inside Rising Star cave, are intriguing. Although the cave had been explored many times before, the bones were unknown to researchers until two spelunkers discovered, by chance, the narrow passage leading to them. The crevasse was so tight (8 inches in some places) Berger could not enter the fossil chamber himself: Instead he advertised on Facebook for slender scientists willing to carry out the claustrophobic excavation. Six women ultimately got the job. Berger and other team members ended up watching the excavation work by video link outside the cave.
Berger and the team that studied the fossils say the Rising Star hominins had brains as small as a gorilla’s, less than half the size of most people’s brains today. The males stood about 5 feet tall and weighed 100 pounds, on average. They said the creatures had curved fingers useful for climbing, but had feet similar to humans and suitable for long-distance walking. Their teeth had an odd combination of modern and “primitive” characteristics. Altogether, the team said, the fossils exhibited a “mosaic” of atypical features.
“Whenever you hear the word ‘mosaic’ in evolutionary lingo, what that means is this species does not fit very well into our preferred phylogenic scheme,” said Casey Luskin, a research coordinator for the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a think tank in Seattle that promotes intelligent design. “There’s a lot of people that are disputing that this could be a human ancestor.”
The scientists admit they don’t know the fossils’ age: The bones were not in a sediment layer that could be dated, and the researchers have not yet performed radiocarbon dating, which will damage the bones. Based on their interpretation of the evolutionary tree, they believe the fossils to be 2.5 million years old or more. That would potentially make them—to the delight of some evolutionary biologists—a transitional form between ancestral australopiths and the more modern Homo genus.
Berger admitted, though, that the fossils might be only tens of thousands of years old. Dating efforts are ongoing.
But some scientists dispute Berger’s contention that all 1,500 bones came from the same species.
“Why do all belong to the same species? Because they were found in the same cave,” wrote University of Pittsburgh anthropologist Jeffrey Schwartz in a commentary. “But, the published images tell a different story.” Schwartz said the skull fragments had different shapes, suggesting they came from different species and might not even belong in the Homo genus.
The bones came from at least 15 males and females, including infants and elderly. One big mystery is how these individuals ended up so deep in a hard-to-reach cavern: There are no teeth marks suggesting animals dragged the bones there, and no rubble suggesting a flood deposited them there. Berger’s hypothesis is that they were intentionally buried in the cave as part of a ritualistic interment.
the Noses on these artist conceptions always bug me.
the end of MY Nose is made out of Cartilage and thus wont outlast the rest of my F;esh by a great deal of time.
Perhaps these “guys” noses were of an earlier configuration and constructer of 100 percent Bone??
The “scientists” must be guessing...I guess
Ya think? By this time next year they’ll tell you what they ate, believed, worshipped and looked for in their in-laws.
Might be related to Al Sharpton ...
Just as likely a place their contemporaries placed the freaks from inbreeding. My guess, at this point, is just as good as theirs. LOL!
The thought had done crosst my mine....
” “mosaic” of atypical features.”
HOMO NALEDI
Aint Dat Sexcess??
Looks and sounds oddly like George Takei........oh, my.
I’d say the next thing is to get some estimates of age (difficult in a cave). They do seem different than other pre humans. They may well be a branch that didn’t go anywhere.
This is the guy with the credit for finding evacuating and describing these fossils. As such, he gets the first shot at proposing the name and placing in a genus. Now, all of the rest get to throw darts at him. Mostly, they are jealous that they didn’t make the discovery, but his opinion will have to withstand considerable criticism over the next few years. Probably none of these first complainers have even seen the fossils except on the PBS NOVA program.
I’m guessing that his description and name will stand, but we’ll see.
“The “scientists” must be guessing...I guess”
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Doubtless we will also be told that they were gay as well.
the one in the photo was clearly Trans Gendered....
from the skeletons... I simply cant determine anything
from the artists speculative rendering...Im not really certain either.
At lease these might not end up like “lucy”.... big fraud
Lucy wasn’t a fraud. Here skeleton preserved over 40% of her body and hundreds of skeletons of her species have been found. While they are most likely to be ancestral to us, there is no final proof in a more advanced immediate descendent yet.
Seems to me that I have seen a few of them still running around in this time frame.
According to Richard Leakey, who along with Johanson is probably the best-known fossil-anthropologist in the world, Lucy’s skull is so incomplete that most of it is ‘imagination made of plaster of paris’.1 Leakey even said in 1983 that no firm conclusion could be drawn about what species Lucy belonged to.
In reinforcement of the fact that Lucy is not a creature ‘in between’ ape and man, Dr Charles Oxnard, Professor of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia, said in 1987 of the australopithecines (the group to which Lucy is said to have belonged):
“‘imagination made of plaster of paris’” I liked that ,,,,,sort of like “liberal “thought”
There are hundreds of similar and related fossils. Many found and validated since 1987. If Lucy was a “one of” there would be many grounds to question her relationships but there are too many similar fossil creatures to toss her to the side. No one can yet definitely tie her to us, that’s not how it works but until someone else comes around in her time period with more human like attributes, Lucy is it.
[[Deep inside a cave 30 miles from Johannesburg, South Africa, a tight crevasse guards the passageway to what was, until recently, the grave of at least 15 human-like individuals.]]
Deep inside a cave 30 miles from Johannesburg, South Africa, a tight crevasse guards the passageway to what was, until recently, the grave of at least 15 monkeys who fell down the crevice and could not get back out.. Then after their discovery, ‘scientists’ concocted wild but false information, claiming for instance that the ‘feet are remarkably human-like’ when infact they are NOT- the arches in the feet are nothing like human arches- but that didn’t stop the ‘scientists’ from making the false claim and hyping the lie hoping that the news media would pick up o n the story and inflate it even more with even bigger lies about the supposed ‘human-like features’ of this monkey- - which of course they did”
There- fixed the opening line
[[Homo naledi’s shoulder joints and curved finger bones are typical of tree-swinging apes. Its flared hips are typical of australopithecine apes. The lower ribcage widens just like the ribcage of australopithecine apes. And while Homo naledi reportedly has a “generally humanlike ankle and foot” in that the shapes of some of the foot bones could be consistent with an arched foot, this is described in the study as a lower arch with a different orientation than typical of the modern human foot.2
The study describing Homo naledi, published in the journal eLife, indicates the wrist, hands, and thumbs were proportioned in such a way to be able to manipulate tools. (As we noted recently, another team of scientists surveying australopithecine hands confirmed that although australopithecines have longer thumbs than living apes, their finger-thumb proportions resemble neither human nor chimpanzee hands. See “Are Human Hands More Primitive Than Chimps’?” to explore this point further.)]]
https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/homo-naledi-new-species-human-ancestor/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.