Posted on 06/11/2003 3:31:46 PM PDT by aculeus
In a discovery that several colleagues describe as "spectacular" and "extraordinary," an international team of researchers has uncovered fossils in Ethiopia that fill a crucial gap in the record of human evolution.
Judged by their physical characteristics, the 160,000-year-old-fossils - nearly complete skulls of two adults and a child found near the village of Herto - teeter on the razor-thin edge of change between anatomically early and modern humans. The team also found skull pieces and teeth from seven other individuals.
The discoveries dovetail with an expanding body of genetic evidence indicating that modern humans first evolved in Africa about 150,000 years ago.
Over the years, paleoanthropologists have gathered fossils that open windows on key periods in the history of human evolution in Africa dating back millions of years, notes Tim White, co-leader of the team that made the discovery. But "the record has been mute" on what was happening 150,000 years ago, he says.
"We're opening the first window on the continent in this time period," he adds. And the view from the window is "very consistent with the predictions made by genetic evidence" that modern humans originated in Africa.
Combined with existing fossil and genetic evidence, researchers say, the new find seriously undermines hypotheses that modern humans evolved roughly simultaneously in different regions of the world and that in Europe, Neanderthals gave rise to anatomically modern Europeans.
In one sense, the finds at Herto come as little surprise to some paleoanthropologists who work in Africa.
Given the pattern of development in fossils that date to either side of the Herto group, these are the kind of hominids one could expect from that time and that region of Africa, according to Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at Arizona State University's Institute for Human Origins.
What makes them special, he says, is their "outstanding state of preservation" and their tightly defined dates. The technique that Dr. White's team used allowed it to date the fossils between 160,000 and 154,000 years ago. The age of other potential near-modern human fossils, such as those found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, is more uncertain.
The White team, which details its results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, first came across the site where the fossils were found on Nov. 16, 1997. It's a landscape that today looks as much like a Martian plain as anything on Earth.
Pebble-strewn, virtually treeless, scorchingly hot, the terrain along the rift valley containing the site stretches in subtle undulations toward distant mountains. But 160,000 years ago, when much of the Northern Hemisphere sagged under a sheath of ice two miles thick, this patch of Africa was the site of a shallow freshwater lake teeming with catfish, crocs, and hippos, researchers say.
According to White, he noticed a butchered hippo skull and related artifacts in an eroding slope near Herto. Eleven days later, he and colleagues returned to survey the site.
As White worked on a shaded enclosure for a lunch break, he says, "I sent two people off to begin the survey near where we had found the hippo." When they came back about a half hour later, both had found hominids, he says.
And the painstakingly slow process of collection and excavation began.
Of the specimens included in Thursday's report, the child's cranium presented perhaps the biggest reconstruction challenge. More than 200 pieces were scattered over some 4,300 square feet of the valley floor, presenting Ethiopian scientist and team member Berhane Asfaw with a 3-D jigsaw puzzle to assemble.
In addition to the hominids, stone tools also emerged from the team's excavations that signal a shift in toolmaking technology to the flake-based features of the Middle Stone Age. Moreover, one of the adult skull fragments shows evidence of parallel surface cuts that could indicate some form of primitive burial rites, the team reports.
This evolution hoax has been going on for a hundred years. That must be where the moon landing hoax project learned how to screen all their people to carry their stories for so long.
Don't confuse the people with new evidence. The issue about how to interpret Genesis has already been decided. God just put all that stuff out there in Africa to fool us and test our faith.
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Yes...I could go on, but why waste time with all these scientific hoaxes?
'A' missing link, not 'the' missing link. Have you ever appreciated the wide variation in canines that is acheived by very minor manipulations of neotony in their genetic material? Think for a moment in what an incredibly short time period mankind has selectively created such an amazing variation. As the understanding of genetic code expands so will this ability. You ain't seen nothing yet...
If this is a reflection of the logic used in their research then we can rest assured that the title "missing link" is still owned by Keith Richards.
I have known "christians" who have said something similar to that. I know some people who believe that dinosaurs were killed before Adam and Eve were made and their remains were left there to "test our faith".
The truth of the matter is that the fossils are what they are: fossils. Any comments beyond that that are opinion, speculation based on biases of one kind or another.
Evolutionists have an anti-G-d/anti-bible bias. Creationists have an anti-evolution bias.
I was watching a young Golden Eagle learn how to fly behind my house the other day. He was colored so different from his parents that I began to wonder if they were really Golden Eagles, or some other kind of hawk.
So I got on the net and looked up Golden Eagles, and practically every one I found looked different from the birds behind my house. Particularly, most on the net had feathers on their legs, and ours didn't.
After looking at bunches of pix, I finally decided that there are lots of variations on what defines a "Golden Eagle". And some don't have feathers on their legs.
Bottom line, there is a huge variation of life, both over distance, and time. And given enough time (and there's been LOTS of that), anything is within the imagination.
It's been interesting that the predictions made a century ago about what the early forms of man would look like are pretty close to what they're finding. There's some differences in the detail, which just gives more credence to the finds. Had they been real hoaxes, then what was found would have matched the predictions exactly.
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