Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, who led the team that found the fossils in August 2008, said the team were hoping to reveal a possible two further skeletons from the same site.
He was reluctant to define the new species as a "missing link" in human evolutionary history, but said it would "contribute enormously to our understanding of what was going on at that moment where the early members of the genus Homo emerged".
SHOOT: It's part of a series of 'linkages' certainly. Creationists have the view that there is one central missing link where God touched an ape and a man started evolving. Of course we know that the evolutionary process, from birds, to mice to men, doesn't work like that, as demonstrated in the fossil record.
The fossils, a juvenile male and an adult female, were found in the Malapa caves in the "Cradle of Humankind" World Heritage Site, 40km outside Johannesburg.
The species had long arms, like an ape, short powerful hands, a very advanced pelvis and long legs capable of striding and possibly running like a human, the researchers said.
The scientists estimate both hominids were about 1.27m, although the child would have grown taller.
"These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new chapter of human evolution... when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life in the trees to life on the ground," said Berger.
The finding of the pre-human, or hominid, fossils - which scientists say are between 1.78 and 1.95 million years old - was published in the journal Science and may answer some key questions about where humans came from.
|
clipped from www.news24.com
No comments:
Post a Comment