Older Guy Makes Lucy Look like Stand Up Girl
Newly Discovered Skeleton Suggests Early Man Walked Upright
Well, a new partial skeleton of the species Australopithecus afarensis has been found in the Afar region of Ethiopia, and according to one scientist, the skeletal form shows that it could have a very human like walking ability. See photos HERE.
This is the first time since Lucy was uncovered in 1974 that remains other than odd fragments of bone have been found,although an almost complete skeleton of a child was discovered during digs at another site in Ethiopia.
The dig on this site is led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie, an anthropologist from the Cleveland Museum Of Natural History in Ohio. His team have dubbed their new find "Kadanuumuu", which means "Big Man". Since he is estimated to have stood between 5 and 5 1/2 feet tall, he is definitely big compared to Lucy, who would have stood only 3 1/2 feet high.
The excavations took place between 2005 and 2008, and so far fossils of 32 bones have been found, belonging to the one skeleton. The find is in the region called Woranso-Mille, which is about 48km, about 30 miles north of where Lucy was found.
The long legs and a chest that curves inwards indicate that this man most likely walked upright, and also might have climbed trees, according to a preliminary report that was published on 21st June.
Various features of the skeleton, including it's human like shoulder blade, suggest that this race of early humanoids were not chimpanzee like, as has been previously thought.
Skeletons of this great age are "far and few between" according to William Jungers, an anthropologist from the university of Stony Brook in New York. This new find does help to confirm much of what we do know about Lucy, but at the same time raises more questions, such as whether they climbed trees in search of food, or whether they waited for the food to fall to the ground, and how did they manage to escape predators.
Sources:
Published by Tony Payne
Tony Payne is a freelance writer who lives on the South Coast of England with his wife Debbie. He has worked in the IT Industry all his life, and has been writing on various sites for the last 10 years. T... View profile
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19 Comments
Post a CommentInteresting info!
Lucy came to Houston a few years ago. :)
This is exciting news, giving us more information about early man. Each discovery helps fill in our information gaps that much more.
Nice work Tony!
Tony, great article. So glad they finally found a full skeletal form, I'd heard Lucy had been pieced together (non-matching bones) to force a missing-link thing-y.
Wow, interesting.
This is amazingly awesome. How you ever "dug" up these facts, you deserve accolades.
Hmmm. Why would they not just conclude it IS a human? Humans can climb trees too. Most of the "species" formerly discovered were put together from one bone fragment. This is all just fascinating theory, unprovable.
I hadn't heard. that is really amazing :) cheers!
It iss amazing all the new discoveries that are still being made about the origins of man. Fascinating stuff.