Posted on 08/28/2022 5:13:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A blackened, broken leg bone from Earth’s prehistoric past may hold the answer to when early humans diverged from apes and started their own evolutionary path.
The fossilized find, first uncovered two decades ago, suggests that early humans regularly walked on two feet some seven million years ago... Since many consider bipedalism the major milestone that put our own lineage on a different evolutionary path than the apes, Sahelanthropus could be the very oldest known hominin—the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all of our immediate ancestors.
The species could even be our oldest non-ape ancestor, if its lineage led to Homo sapiens instead of dying out. But while the fossil femur appears to have supported the demands of habitual upright walking, Sahelanthropus’s chimp-like forearms show that it still spent plenty of time in the trees. Two surviving arm bones reveal that the species used a grasping climbing technique to support a type of hybrid lifestyle that could have persisted among early hominins for some three million years...
Boisserie and colleagues, some of whom originally described Sahelanthropus in 2002, compared more than 20 traits of the femur and forearm bones with a large sample of living chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, fossil Miocene apes, early hominin bipeds like Orrorin tugenensis and Ardipithecus Ramidus, and remains of prehistoric Homo and Homo sapiens. They compared external shapes, curves, internal structures and thicknesses to learn if the bone had the same characteristics as those known to be well-suited to the demands of force, balance and other requirements of upright walking. The femur of S. tchadensis showed many similarities with other hominin species, while no traits of the femur were also found exclusively in apes.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Lol!
Anthropology ping.
I'm Walkin' (Fats Domino)
Actually, I prefer “Walking To New Orleans.”
I grok that.
Whatever. These scientists are making wild guesses and calling it ‘science.’
Good song. Thanks.
Never saw that live version but always have loved that sort of Buddy Miles Express style brass on stage. (Little appreciated but Jimi Hendrix liked him and put him in the Band of Gypsys after he had been around a while.) Booker T, Sam and Dave, a lot of good music in those days.
Yeah, check the voter rolls. Bet it voted for Brandon
‘Do you credit as true the theory that humans evolved from apes?’
Homo sapiens clearly emerged from earlier hominid lines, from which it diverged and became a separate species thousands of years ago...
This might be interesting if it always wasn’t framed in the Humanist vs. Theistic politic.
I’m tired of “scientists” trying to deny the existence of God and I’m tired of theology people trying to deny how we developed into what we are today.
‘This might be interesting if it always wasn’t framed in the Humanist vs. Theistic politic.’
I read the entire article; two words that never appeared in it are ‘humanist’ and ‘theistic...’
you made that association on your own...
Clearly...?
Hey, I asked, you told.
Thx.
You make a good point. 👍
Not literally.
The T of E is not worth spelling out, much less studying.
I have no idea what T of E is. I suppose something about toes.
I asked, but looking back, I see that I didn’t ask you!
That’s okay tho...the more the merrier.
🙈🙉🙊🐵🙈🙉🙊🐵🙈🙉🙊🐵🙈🙉🙊🐵🙈🙉🙊🦸
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