Posted on 03/31/2012 11:33:41 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Ancient foot bones from a recently discovered pre-human species, which had opposable big toes like a gorilla's, could shed light on how the ancestors of humanity came to walk upright, researchers say.
Humans dominate the planet partly because walking upright frees their hands for tool use. Among the earliest known relatives of humanity to walk upright was Australopithecus afarensis, the species including the famed "Lucy." This hominin is a leading candidate for direct ancestor of the human lineage, living about 2.9 million to 3.8 million years ago in East Africa.
Although Lucy and her kin were bipedal, there is debate about how much they depended on life in trees. Now scientists also have fossils of a hitherto unknown species of hominin that lived about the same time and place as Australopithecus afarensis...
The 3.4-million-year-old fossils were discovered in 2009 in a part of Ethiopia known as Burtele. Nowadays this area is hot and dry, with temperatures skyrocketing up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius). But "nearby fossils of fish, crocodiles and turtles and physical and chemical characteristics of sediments show the environment was a mosaic of river and delta channels adjacent to an open woodland of trees and bushes," said fellow Case Western researcher Beverly Saylor.
Scientists have long argued that Australopithecus afarensis was the only pre-human species between 3 million and 4 million years ago. These new fossils of an unknown hominin species are the first incontrovertible evidence that at least two pre-human species lived at the same time and place around 3.4 million years ago.
The fossils include eight bones from the front half of a right foot. Such hominin fossils are rare, since they are fragile and subject to decay or carnivores.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Researcher Stephanie Melillo holds the fourth metatarsal of the Burtele partial foot right after its discovery. The team found eight bones from the front half of a right foot. Such hominin fossils are rare, since they are fragile and are often destroyed in the face of carnivores and decay. ][CREDIT: The Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Photo courtesy: Yohannes Haile-Selassie]
hitherto unknown species = “Send Grant Money !!”
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.The 3.4-million-year-old fossils were discovered in 2009...That means they're 3,400,003 years old now. |
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I only gave up treehouses because there aren’t any trees on my property strong enough to support them. Rope ladder maintenance is another consideration . . .
;’D
What I’d like to know is how many evolutionary events define the transition from this “pre-human species” to the human species.
And what were the specifics of the genetic mutations forming these evolutionary events?
Some people in Santa Cruz are still living in tree houses.
oh that makes it so much clearer
Not that really does make it clearer....they came out of ‘tree houses’ for the Colonel’s finest. :)
Looks like a bone from modern day man both in size and structure. I would doubt that this bone was part of a foot with opposable great toes.
It’s all speculation. A clear fossil record exists for everything but the evolution of man as described by those who believe we descended from apes.
It’s like global warming. The evidence does not support it but they latch onto any event they can or distort the facts to fit their belief.
“send grant money”
So correct. It’s about grant money and supports the attack on religion and promotion of socialism.
Oh hell, I threw those chicken bones down a few months back when I was hiking through Ethiopia. A fellow has to eat something.
Be nice.
I used to spend some pleasurable time here in the mid-late 60's.
Based on some of the other replies, apparently those tree houses have broadband.
Once upon a time, long, long ago..........
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_anatomy
That's one of Wiki's pages dealing with Neanderthal anatomy. It shows a mockup of a complete Neanderthal skeleton with normal looking feet which are probably just concocted from minimal real evidence as usual, and then an image of a Neanderthal footprint which is presumably real and a caption describing it as from the Natural History Museum in Prague:
THAT is pretty obviously an ape's footprint. You could view that image as an artifact of a human-like Neanderthal having once had a pet gorilla; I view it as an artifact of people looking at something the wrong way.
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