NEWS 24– Two partial skeletons unearthed in a South African cave belong
to a previously unclassified species of pre-human dating back almost two
million years and may shed new light on human evolution, scientists said on
Thursday.
Fossils of the bones of a young male and an adult female suggest the newly
documented species, called Australopithecus sediba, walked upright and shared
many physical traits with the earliest known human Homo species.
The finding of the pre-human, or hominid, fossils – which scientists say are
between 1.78 and 1.95 million years old – was published in the journal Science
and may answer some key questions about where humans came from.
Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
who led the team that found the fossils in August 2008, said the team were
hoping to reveal a possible two further skeletons from the same site.
He was reluctant to define the new species as a “missing link” in
human evolutionary history, but said it would “contribute enormously to
our understanding of what was going on at that moment where the early members
of the genus Homo emerged”.
Continue reading about New Two Million Year Old Humanoid Species Found.
© Reuters, 2010
Photo by flickr user vintagedept
