http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/0...chman-text
And there shall be much gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts in creationist shitholes this evening!
Quote:ee Berger thinks the cradle is about to rock again. He believes Malapa may hold the key to one of the most significant, least understood chapters in the human evolutionary journey: the origin of the first species enough like us to be called human—a member of the genus Homo.
"This is where that story may have begun," he says, as he starts the climb out of the pit.
At an international gathering of anthropologists in Minneapolis this past April, Berger and his colleagues laid out arguments for why the Malapa species, known as Australopithecus sediba, may represent an intermediate form between the primitive australopiths and our genus, Homo. The evidence they point to includes an australopith's little brain (with some curiously modern features), apelike shoulders, and arms adapted to climbing in trees—attached to a bizarrely modern hand with the precision grip of a toolmaker. According to the researchers, the adult female's foot presents an even odder melange; her mostly modern ankle is connected to a heel bone more primitive than that of A. afarensis—Lucy's species—which is at least a million years older.
And there shall be much gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts in creationist shitholes this evening!
