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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
Posts: 5596
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 Sun Mar 26, 2006 12:21 am Could Ethiopian skull be missing link? |
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| Quote: |
Could Ethiopian skull be missing link?
Scientists believe find could link homo erectus and modern man
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) -- Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia said Saturday that they have discovered the skull of a small human ancestor that could be a missing link between the extinct Homo erectus and modern man.
The hominid cranium -- found in two pieces and believed to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old -- "comes from a very significant period and is very close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human," said Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia.
Archaeologists found the early human cranium five weeks ago at Gawis in Ethiopia's northeastern Afar region, Sileshi said.
Several stone tools and fossilized animals including two types of pigs, zebras, elephants, antelopes, cats, and rodents were also found at the site.
Sileshi, an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist based at Indiana University, said most fossil hominids are found in pieces but the near-complete skull -- a rare find -- provided a wealth of information.
"The Gawis cranium provides us with the opportunity to look at the face of one of our ancestors," the archaeology project said in a statement.
Homo erectus, which many believe was an ancestor of modern Homo sapiens, is thought to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
The cranium dates to a time about which little is known -- the transition from African Homo erectus to modern humans. The fossil record from Africa for this period is sparse and most of the specimens poorly dated, project archaeologists said.
The face and cranium of the fossil are recognizably different from those of modern humans, but bear unmistakable anatomical evidence that it belongs to the modern human's ancestry, Sileshi said.
"A good fossil provides anatomical evidence that allows us to refine our understanding of evolution. A great fossil forces us to re-examine our views of human origins. I believe the Gawis cranium is a great fossil," said Scott Simpson, a project paleontologist from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine at Cleveland, Ohio.
Scientists conducting surveys in the Gawis River drainage basin found the skull in a small gully, the project statement said.
"This is really exciting because it joins a limited number of fossils which appear to be evolutionary between Homo erectus and our own species Homo sapiens," said Eric Delson, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York, who was not involved in the discovery but has followed the project.
Homo erectus left Africa about 2 million years ago and spread across Asia from Georgia in the Caucasus to China and Indonesia. It first appeared in Africa between 1 million and 2 million years ago.
Between 1 million and perhaps 200,000 years ago, one or more species existed in Africa that gave rise to the earliest members of our own species Homo sapiens -- between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Delson said the fossil found in Ethiopia "might represent a population broadly ancestral to modern humans or it might prove to be one of several side branches which died out without living descendants."
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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IntrepidIsMe
Pimp Handed
Joined: 14 Jun 2002
Posts: 13057
Location: New York
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| Sun Mar 26, 2006 11:10 pm |
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Is this the part where everybody is supposed to be totally surprised?
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Link, the Hero of Time
Vice Admiral
Joined: 15 Sep 2001
Posts: 5581
Location: Kokori Forest, Hyrule
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| Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:44 am |
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Actully, yes.
To find a skull that's almost perfectly whole is an extremely rare find.
Hell, most of the skulls that are usually found are nothing more then pieces. Most "complete" skulls like the Austrolopithecines and Homo genus are just pieces of various different skulls people have formed together into what scientists think they look like.
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madlilnerd
Duchess of Dancemat
Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 5885
Location: Slough, England
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| Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:22 pm |
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It is pretty cool to find a good specimen... I suppose the lack of human fossils kinda shows our intelligence. We did a lot less falling into tar pits than other species.
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IntrepidIsMe
Pimp Handed
Joined: 14 Jun 2002
Posts: 13057
Location: New York
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| Mon Mar 27, 2006 5:58 pm |
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| Link, the Hero of Time wrote: | | Actully, yes. |
I was talking about the fact that they found the so-called "missing link", 
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Link, the Hero of Time
Vice Admiral
Joined: 15 Sep 2001
Posts: 5581
Location: Kokori Forest, Hyrule
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| Tue Mar 28, 2006 12:04 am |
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| IntrepidIsMe wrote: | | I was talking about the fact that they found the so-called "missing link", |
Ah, then no, not really. I do believe this is the 23rd time something like this has been called the "Missing Link."
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Theresa
Lux Mihi Deus
Joined: 17 Jun 2001
Posts: 27256
Location: United States of America
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| Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:40 am |
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So that makes this #24?
It's an AOL link, soz.
-------signature-------
Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with our scars
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CJ Cregg
Commodore
Joined: 05 Oct 2002
Posts: 1254
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| Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:44 am |
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Speaking of Missing Link:
| Quote: | Discovered: the missing link that solves a mystery of evolution
Alok Jha, science correspondent
Thursday April 6, 2006
The Guardian
Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.
Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action - like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds.
As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power.
Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, said: "Our emergence on to the land is one of the more significant rites of passage in our evolutionary history, and Tiktaalik is an important link in the story."
Tiktaalik - the name means "a large, shallow-water fish" in the Inuit language Inuktikuk - shows that the evolution of animals from living in water to living on land happened gradually, with fish first living in shallow water.
The animal lived in the Devonian era lasting from 417m to 354m years ago, and had a skull, neck, and ribs similar to early limbed animals (known as tetrapods), as well as a more primitive jaw, fins, and scales akin to fish.
The scientists who discovered it say the animal was a predator with sharp teeth, a crocodile-like head, and a body that grew up to 2.75 metres (9ft) long.
"It's very important for a number of reasons, one of which is simply the fact that it's so well-preserved and complete," said Jennifer Clack, a paleontologist at Cambridge University and author of an accompanying article in Nature.
Scientists have previously been able to trace the transition of fish into limbed animals only crudely over the millions of years they anticipate the process took place. They suspected that an animal which bridged the gap between fish and land-based tetrapods must have existed - but, until now, there had been scant evidence of one.
"Tiktaalik blurs the boundary between fish and land-living animal both in terms of its anatomy and its way of life," said Neil Shubin, a biologist at the University of Chicago, and a leader of the expedition which found Tiktaalik.
The near-pristine fossil was found on Ellesmere Island, Canada, which is 600 miles from the north pole in the Arctic Circle.
Scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University led several expeditions into the inhospitable icy desert to search for the fossils.
The find is the first complete evidence of an animal that was on the verge of the transition from water to land. "The find is a dream come true," said Ted Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences.
"We knew that the rocks on Ellesmere Island offered a glimpse into the right time period and were formed in the right kinds of environments to provide the potential for finding fossils documenting this important evolutionary transition."
When Tiktaalik lived, the Canadian Arctic region was part of a land mass which straddled the equator. Like the Amazon basin today, it had a subtropical climate and the animal lived in small streams. The skeleton indicates that it could support its body under the force of gravity.
Farish Jenkins, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University said: "This represents a critical early phase in the evolution of all limbed animals, including humans - albeit a very ancient step." Tiktaalik also gives biologists a new understanding of how fins turned into limbs. Its fin contains bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals.
"Most of the major joints of the fin are functional in this fish," Professor Shubin said.
"The shoulder, elbow and even parts of the wrist are already there and working in ways similar to the earliest land-living animals."
Dr Clack said that, judging from the fossil, the first evolutionary transition from sea to land probably involved learning how to breathe air. "Tiktaalik has lost a series of bones that, in fishes, covers the gill region and helps to operate the gill-breathing mechanism," she said. "The air-breathing mechanism it had would have been elaborated and having lost the series of bones that lies between the head and the shoulder girdle means it's got a neck, it can raise its head more easily in order to gulp the air.
"The flexible robust limbs appear to be connected with pushing the head out of the water to breathe the air."
H Richard Lane, director of sedimentary geology and palaeobiology at the US National Science Foundation, said: "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil Rosetta stones for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone - fish to land-roaming tetrapods."
A cast of the fossil goes on display at the Science Museum in South Kensington central London today.
  
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