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Unearthing man's
ancestors
Latest
fossil find suggests our long-lost ancestors may have walked
upright nearly 6 million years ago
press
release | news clips | slide
show
The
first humans to emerge may be about 1 million years older than
anthropologists had previously thought. Last week's discovery
of fossilized teeth, toe, collar, hand and jaw bones - made by
an international team of paleoanthropologists, including UC Berkeley
graduate student Yohannes Haile-Selassie and UC Berkeley paleoanthropologist
Tim White - appears to belong to the oldest human ancestor ever
unearthed.
Dated at
about 5.8 million years old, the fossils were discovered in
a parched rockscape in Ethiopia's Middle Awash region, about
140 miles northeast of the capital city of Addis Ababa and just
50 miles south of Lucy's home, inhabited by the infamous 3.2
million-year-old hominid.
There's
a new twist to the story of humanity's birth, though, as reported
in the July 12 issue of Nature and in a second, previously published
Nature article coauthored by Los Alamos National Laboratory
research geologist Giday WoldeGabriel. Given the paleoclimate
of the region 5.5 million years ago - now thought to have been
a lush, forested stretch of land fed by large lakes and plentiful
rainfall - scientists are suggesting that early humans may have
come out of the trees to walk upright for a different reason:
to get to the next tree, rather than to cover more ground expeditiously
in search of food.
UC
Berkeley press release
Ethiopian
find shows human ancestors walked upright nearly 6 million years
ago
(press release, 11 July)
Selected
news clips about the Ethiopian discovery
One
Giant Step for Mankind
(Time Magazine, July 23)
Fossils
Retrace Man's History Over 5 million Years
(CNN.com, July 11)
Cal
Scholar's Team Says It Found Oldest Humanlike Fossil
(San Francisco Chronicle, July 12)
Slide
Show
Images
from the Ethiopian site
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