Cleveland researchers say fossil find overturns thinking on human evolution

Cleveland researchers say fossil find overturns thinking on human evolution
Topic Started: Oct 1 2009, 03:42 PM (30 Views)
Adregalus	Oct 1 2009, 03:42 PM Post #1
Administrator Posts: 298 Group: Admins Member #1 Joined: May 6, 2009	http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/10/cleveland_researchers_say_foss.html (includes video) News of the find rippled through the competitive community of human fossil hunters, but for the next 15 years, the team members kept mum about what they had unearthed. They spent the time teasing the fragile bones out of the surrounding rock, cleaning and reassembling the 125 pieces, some badly crushed, like a puzzle. They studied them under microscopes and with CT scanners, made 3-D computer models and plaster sculptures, and compared the specimens with known fossils. As years passed with no news, the secretive work became known as anthropology's Manhattan Project. This morning, the lid comes off. In simultaneous news conferences in America and Ethiopia and a lengthy series of reports in the journal Science, the international team – composed prominently of researchers from or with ties to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and other Northeast Ohio institutions – will unveil an extraordinary addition to humanity's history. The partial skeleton, representing a 4.4 million-year-old species known as Ardipithecus ramidus, is prompting researchers to reconsider much of what they had presumed about the origin of modern humans and the development of our signature trait, upright walking. Some say the find is more significant than Lucy, the iconic 3.2 million-year-old human ancestor found in 1974 by the Cleveland museum's Donald Johanson. "The skeleton was a totally unexpected jackpot," said Haile-Selassie, who now holds Johanson's title as the museum's curator of physical anthropology, and who will help announce the discovery in Washington, D.C. "Ardi," as the stubby 4-foot-tall female hominid has been nicknamed, had a surprising mix of features that its discoverers say enabled it to carefully clamber on four limbs while in trees, and walk on two while on the ground. It was a species in transition. "This is a door that's never been open before, and we looked in and are seeing strange stuff," said Scott Simpson, a Case Western Reserve University paleoanthropologist who found some of the A. ramidus fossils and helped analyze the creature's wrist and hand. "It's an animal that is betwixt and between." Ardi's flexible wrist and powerful, grasping big toes and thumbs helped it maneuver on top of branches, gripping them like pincers. Its curved lower spine and the design of its upper pelvis accommodated upright walking, although with its flat, arch-less feet and the protruding, thumb-like big toes, no one would have mistaken its odd gait for that of a modern human. It probably couldn't have walked long distances or run. Edited by Adregalus, Oct 1 2009, 03:43 PM.



Fluffy	Oct 5 2009, 04:04 AM Post #2
Mr. Fluffy Posts: 53 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: Jun 24, 2009	So this could be the missing link?



ProjectVenus	Oct 5 2009, 07:38 PM Post #3
Project Venus Blake Posts: 170 Group: Members Member #8 Joined: May 15, 2009	hallelujah



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