Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / September 2006

### quoting Reuters
remains of earliest child discovered in Ethiopia

By Patricia Reaney Wed Sep 20, 3:16 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of the earliest
child ever found shows the ancient ancestor of modern humans walked
upright but may also have climbed trees, scientists said on Wednesday.
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They found the well-preserved remains of a three-year-old girl of the
species Australopithecus afarensis -- which includes the fossil
skeleton known as "Lucy" -- in the Dikika area of Ethiopia, 400 kms
northeast of the capital Addis Ababa.

"It represents the earliest and most complete partial skeleton of a
child ever found in the history of paeleoanthropology," said Dr
Zeresenay Alemseged, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The skull, torso and upper and lower limbs, including the hand, show
both human and ape-like features. The state of the ancient bones
suggest she was buried in a flood which may also have caused her death.

The remains provide the first evidence of what babies of early human
ancestors looked like. The nearly complete skeleton will also provide
information about the child's height and structure.

"This child will help us understand a lot about the species to which it
belongs," said Alemseged, leader of the international team of
scientists who reported the findings in the journal Nature.

"The lower part of the body, which includes the foot, the shin bone and
the thigh bone clearly shows us that this species was an upright
walking creature," he told Reuters.

But some of the features from the upper part of the body, including the
shoulder blade and arms are more ape-like. The fingers are long and
curved which suggest she might have been able to swing through trees.

"The finding is the most complete hominid skeleton ever found in the
world," Zeresenay Alemseged, who is head of the Paleoanthropological
Research Team, told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
(snip)

"The new bones belong to a three-year-old girl who lived 3.3 million
years ago, 150,000 years before Lucy," Zeresenay said.

(snipped)
An analysis of the sediment in which the remains were found enabled
researchers to build a picture of the type of environment in which the
child lived.

It was a lush area with flowing water, forests and grassland which was
also affected by volcanic eruptions. The range of habitats was suitable
for hippos, crocodiles and relatives of the wildebeest.

"We can see from the sediment that the region was very much
characterized by a mosaic of environment that ranged from forests and
woodlands near the rivers, to seasonally flooded grasslands to a flood
plain that would have supported more open vegetation," said Dr Jonathan
Wynn of the University of South Florida who dated the sediments
surrounding the remains.

### end quoting Reuters

Too bad it was not a complete fossil remains of Orrorin for the 6
million year is more important than the 3 million year mark in human
evolution.

According to Stonethrowing theory, throwing preceded walking and it is
throwing that created walking.

Orrorin was biped some 6 million years ago. That means some ape around
8 million years ago in Italy was beginning to make a living by throwing
rocks and stones. This proclivity to throw rocks and stones gave an ape
advantages over all the other apes of its species and he was able
thence to reproduce more offspring who in turn had the highest
advantage and further reproduce. This throwing behaviour was
accomodated by changes in the bone and muscle anatomy to further
enhance throwing which means bipedalism.

So by the time Orrorin was on the African scene some 6 million years
ago, he was already a Throwing bipedal humanlike species.

It would have been nice to have a full fossil skeleton of Orrorin but a
fossil of a 3 million year old humanlike is just as good because we can
trace out the fact that the Throwing preceded the bipedalism.

The trouble with incomplete skeletons is that they do not afford the
opportunity to compare the bones for throwing with the bones for
bipedalism and how the throwing bones are the dominant group and
throwing bones dictate changes in the bipedal bones. So whenever we
find complete skeletons we can make strides in progress of
understanding.

So if we now can get some complete skeleton of Orrorin, we would be in
great shape for we would then compare the state of advance of the
Throwing bones to the Bipedal bones of the 6 million old ancestor and
the 3 million old ancestor.

So keep our fingers crossed for good luck that a complete Orrorin
skeleton is soon found.

And also, please, try to systematically uncover any rocks or stones
near the fossil find as tools or weapons in Stonethrowing. So if there
are a pile of rocks or stones near the fossil find, consider them as
stones used by those ancient ancestors in throwing.

I am posting this to sci.med because one of these days I am writing a
journal article on the fact that our body anatomy created the bones and
muscles of Throwing before our bodies created the bones and muscles of
bipedalism. What I mean is the grooves in the leg bones for bipedalism
came after the bones and muscles for throwing in the arms and fingers
and hands had progressed for throwing. If the human body could be read
as tree rings for age, well, the human tree ring for Throwing came
first and the tree ring for walking upright bipedalism came far later
in time. So that Throwing behaviour created bipedalism.

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies