Meave Leakey has reported in Nature magazine that she has found a new fossil
which is much more similar to modern humans than Lucy, the famous fossil
found by Donald Johanson. One account in the press writes:
"Although Lucy had a face like a chimpanzee, she walked upright like a
human. All those before her - and her species, Australopithecus afarensis -
had a posture similar to apes. She was the missing link.
Lucy's new Kenyan rival presents an alternative link - one with a flattened
face and small teeth not dissimilar to modern humans'. This hominid has been
called Kenyanthropus, meaning flat-faced human from Kenya.
The name is important. Had the researchers called it a species of Homo, the
same genus modern-day humans belong to, they would have been stating
categorically that they thought Kenyanthropus was the ancestor of modern
humans.
Instead, they opted for a new genus altogether and were careful not to take
a position on whether Lucy and her kind or Kenyanthropus led to modern
people. Now it is up to anthropologists to argue the point.
"http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/03/22/FFXZVJBWJKC.html
One can find lots of accounts of this at
http://www.tamu.edu/anthropology/news.html
This creature's skull is much like that of H. rudolfensis which has been
shown to have a human birth pattern. This creature may be a much more
modern being who lived much longer ago and is more humanlike than other
hominids of that time period. This is the type of fossil which fits quite
well within my recently criticized views. Other views make no predictions of
what we will find in the human fossil record.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 22 2001 - 16:28:12 EST