Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / October 2006

Savannah?  Yep,  just like Dart said almost 80 years ago.  Walked from
place to place? Probably ran around a lot out on that savannah also.
Notice the article didn't say swim from place to place. Have a nice day
Marc.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060920/ap_on_sc/human_ancestor
Young 'ape-human' skeleton found

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer 11 minutes ago

NEW YORK - In a discovery sure to fuel an old debate about our
evolutionary history, scientists have found a remarkably complete
skeleton of a 3-year-old female from the ape-man species represented by
"Lucy."
ADVERTISEMENT

The remains found in Africa are 3.3 million years old, making this the
oldest known skeleton of such a youthful human ancestor.

"It's a pretty unbelievable discovery... It's sensational," said Will
Harcourt-Smith, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History
in New York who wasn't involved in the find. "It provides you with a
wealth of information."

For one thing, it gives new evidence for a contentious feud about
whether this species, which walked upright, also climbed and moved
through trees easily.

The species is Australopithecus afarensis, which lived in Africa between
about 4 million and 3 million years ago. The most famous afarensis is
Lucy, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, a creature that lived about
100,000 years after the newfound specimen.

The new find is reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by
Zeresenay Alemseged of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany; Fred Spoor, professor of evolutionary
anatomy at University College London, and others.

The skeleton was discovered in 2000 in northeastern Ethiopia. Scientists
have spent five painstaking years removing the bones from sandstone, and
the job will take years more to complete.

Judging by how well it was preserved, the skeleton may have come from a
body that was quickly buried by sediment in a flood, the researchers said.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime find," said Spoor.

The skeleton has been nicknamed "Selam," which means means "peace" in
several Ethiopian languages.

Most scientists believe afarensis stood upright and walked on two feet,
but they argue about whether it had ape-like agility in trees.

That climbing ability would require anatomical equipment like long arms,
and afarensis had arms that dangled down to just above the knees. The
question is whether such features indicate climbing ability or just
evolutionary baggage.

Spoor said so far, analysis of the new fossil hasn't settled the
argument but does seem to indicate some climbing ability.

While the lower body is very human-like, he said, the upper body is
ape-like:

_The shoulder blades resemble those of a gorilla rather than a modern human.

_The neck seems short and thick like a great ape's, rather than the more
slender version humans have to keep the head stable while running.

_The organ of balance in the inner ear is more ape-like than human.

_The fingers are very curved, which could indicate climbing ability,
"but I'm cautious about that," Spoor said. Curved fingers have been
noted for afarensis before, but their significance is in dispute.

A big question is what the foot bones will show when their sandstone
casing is removed, he said. Will there be a grasping big toe like the
opposable thumb of a human hand? Such a chimp-like feature would argue
for climbing ability, he said.

Yet, to resolve the debate, scientists may have to find a way to inspect
vanishingly small details of such old bones, to get clues to how those
bones were used in life, he said.

Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who didn't participate in
the discovery, said in an interview that the fossil provides strong
evidence of climbing ability. But he also agreed that it won't settle
the debate among scientists, which he said "makes the Middle East look
like a picnic."

Overall, he wrote in a Nature commentary, the discovery provides "a
veritable mine of information about a crucial stage in human
evolutionary history."

The fossil revealed just the second hyoid bone to be recovered from any
human ancestor. This tiny bone, which attaches to the tongue muscles, is
very chimp-like in the new specimen, Spoor said.

While that doesn't directly reveal anything about language, it does
suggest that whatever sounds the creature made "would appeal more to a
chimpanzee mother than a human mother," Spoor said.

The fossil find includes the complete skull, including an impression of
the brain and the lower jaw, all the vertebrae from the neck to just
below the torso, all the ribs, both shoulder blades and both
collarbones, the right elbow and part of a hand, both knees and much of
both shin and thigh bones. One foot is almost complete, providing the
first time scientists have found an afarensis foot with the bones still
positioned as they were in life, Spoor said.

The work was funded by the
National Geographic Society, the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona
State University, the Leakey Foundation and the Planck institute.

It should probably be said here that as ythe Neanderthal and AMH are
chimpanzees four and three,
this bugger could probably not be told from a chimpanzee
without special measurements?

Every year numerous bodies are deposited by
floods (such as by the tsunami of 20 months
ago)  How many are 'rolled into a ball'?

The idea is ridiculous. Nor would it be difficult
to test further.  Make a number of dolls of about
the same size, and put them in various streams
of flowing material (i.e. all manner of natural
and industrial processes).  It would be next-
to-impossible to finish up with a doll in a ball.
The arms and legs get splayed;  if the material
has any density, they get broken off.  In fact,
with adults in such situations (e.g. avalanches
and landslides) the head is usually the first
part of the anatomy to become detached.
That must be even more the case with children.
The neck of a three-year-old is extremely weak
by comparison with an adult, while the head is
proportionately much larger.

There is only one sensible solution:  the infant
was buried, by her loving parents and other
relatives.  They did not want to see scavengers
tear up her body.  What is so hard to
comprehend in such a idea?  Why are PA
types so locked in to traditional doctrine?

Hominids at this time would have been well-
advanced in tool-use, often employing digging-
sticks for roots, and sometimes to get water.
Digging a hole in soft sand to bury a small
child would have been a trivially simple task.

That is why we have so many hominid fossils
-- they were deliberately buried on death.
We would have enormous numbers if our
taxon had not always lived close to sea-level,
where its habitation is subject to huge erosion
as sea-levels rise and fall.  Unsurprisingly,
one of the few locations to escape this fate is
exactly where this fossil was found.  It has
been steadily uplifted, by tectonic forces, over
the past 3 million years.

Paul.