Two New Hominid Finds

We have a couple of takes on this:A Kenyan researcher has discovered two fossils that are likely to stir fresh debate on evolution of man.

quote:

---

A Kenyan researcher has discovered two fossils that are likely to stir fresh debate on evolution of man.

​

Mr Frederick Manthi, a researcher with the National Museums of Kenya, discovered the fossils dating more than a million years at Illeret location of Marsabit district, East of Lake Turkana.

​

Yesterday, the National Museums of Kenya in a letter inviting the media for a press conference to announce the new discoveries said, the fossils that Mr Manthi discovered include an exquisitely preserved skull of Homo Erectus and an upper jaw bone of Homo Habilis.

​

The former according to the museums dates 1.55 million years while the latter is 1.44 million years old.

---

Note this makes the most recent Homo habilis more recent than the oldest Homo erectus ... and their fossil records now overlap.News | The Scotsman

quote:

---

IT IS the iconic image of human evolution: the gradual transformation over millions of years of an ape-like creature into a tall, modern-day human.

​

But the startling discovery of two fossils in Africa has cast serious doubt on this traditional picture, as they prove an early form of human called Homo habilis did not evolve into Homo erectus, as previously believed.

---

This of course is not at all what the current picture of human evolution shows. Where do journalists get off publishing such poppycock ... especially when later in the article it says:

quote:

---

Professor Fred Spoor, an anatomist from University College, London and lead author of the paper, said human evolution was much more complex than once thought. The classic single line from ape to human is something we already knew is not the case," he said.

​

"But we know a bit more about the process of human evolution [as a result of this research]. It is very much like the evolutionary path of any other animal, with lots of side branches and not a single straight line that you see in cartoons."

---

So they interview the lead author who clearly states the current thinking and they STILL get it wrong!Just as an aside the current human evolutionary tree can be seen onhttp://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html

quote:

---

​

Hominds seem remarkable for the sheer diversity of the fossil record. No other mammal has spread over as large a geographic and ecological range, and evolved so many new forms of behavior, within just a few million years.

​

As a further complication, fossils document the coexistence of different hominid species over the last 2 million years ” sometimes in adjacent or overlapping geographic regions. Exactly how these different species coexisted or interacted is unclear.

​

White numbers inside the vertical bars indicate the approximate count of distinct individuals in each species from whom fossil remains survive.

---

This finds adds two individuals to the count, and they add another overlap, coexistence, between species. But the evolution of Homo sapiens has been considered descending from Homo ergaster and NOT from Homo habilis for some time (the above graphic is two years old).Enjoy.

---

Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click)

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Thread copied to the Two New Hominid Finds thread in the Human Origins and Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.