Yo' mama is an ape!
March 29, 2012 at 9:33 pm
(This post was last modified: March 29, 2012 at 9:42 pm by BoyWonder.)
(March 29, 2012 at 11:44 am)frankiej Wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17533826
Quote:Scientists have obtained a fascinating new insight into the evolution of humans and our ability to walk.
It comes from the fossilised bones of a foot that were discovered in Ethiopia and dated to be 3.4 million years old.
Those fossilized bones of a foot that you refer to – http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-human-ancestor-had-feet-like-an-ape-1.10342 – have an opposable big toe, indicating that the owner spent more time climbing trees than walking upright on the ground. Fragmentary associated bones however suggest the rest of its skeleton was much like Lucy's, an australopithecus afarensis, which was an upright walking hominin that spent most of its time on the ground.
So around 3,4 MYA, in Ethiopia, at least 2 different species of hominin lived at the same time, side by side, in the same landscape. So although the suggestion is that the as yet unnamed tree-climbing australopithecine went extinct, I consider it more likely that the two species hybridized, or 'merged' (if they could catch it they could screw it). In that scenario neither disappeared but their hybrids went on to evolve into homo habilis, almost a million years later.
