Human Fossils Predates Earlier Finds by 1.5 Million Year

Richard Finney writes "Reuters reports that French and Kenayn scientists have unearthed fossilized remains of mankinds' earliest know ancestor ahat predate previous discoveries by more than 1.5 million year. The remains belong to at least five individuals, both male and female."

Wow!

[abhinavnath]

The article says, however, that the remains have not been dated yet... the 6 million years figure comes from remains previuosly found in the same strata. I will be much more exciting once they actually date the remains. I mean, this overturns much of what we know about early human evolution.

I wonder what genus these will be put into - yet another *pithecus I imagine!

O/T: Anybody know what the common ancestor of modern primates & man was? I am thinking of Ramapithecus, although I know that's not it. Something beginning with a D and ending in pithecus is all I can come up with.

Re:Six.. or Five Million Years To Earth?

[SigVn]

What about a telephone sanitation kit? Or maybe a bath tub.

Title doesn't make sense.

[bcrowell]

The title of the original article is In Kenya, scientists find fossils of man's earliest ancestor.
The Slashdot article's title is Human Fossils Predates Earlier Finds by 1.5 Million Year.
The Slashdot blurb says ... fossilized remains of mankinds' earliest know ancestor....

The first and third titles are wrong, because our earliest ancestor was a bacterium. The second title is wrong, because these things weren't human by any stretch of the imagination -- they swung from tree branches.

There is a whole continuum of evolution stretching from bacteria to humans. Speciation is not normally a distinct event, but rather a gradual process by which two gene pools become less and less capable of interbreeding. There is no earliest human ancestor, because there's no sharp dividing line between human and nonhuman (much as that bugs some regligious fundamentalists).

The really cool stuff, IMHO, is that we are finding out in more detail how our evolution relates to the evolution of other primates. For instance, we now know that at least three big-brained branches of the primate evolutionary tree coexisted at one time: humans, Neanderthals, and another one whose name I can't remember. It's like the Star Trek universe, where humans can meet and interact with other intelligent species. It would also be interesting to find out for once and for all how Neanderthals relate to us: were they a distinct species, did they have speech, did they have culture,...? There are tantalizing hints, but it's hard to know for sure.

Unfortunately, science journalists are always suckers for Guiness-world-record stories. They make better headlines, and don't make any demands on the reader's intelligence. "Farthest galaxy? Uh, cool!" "Tallest tree? Uh, cool!" "Oldest human? Uh, cool!"

This would mean much more...

[big_groo]

...if they found an intact skull. Sure, the teeth, jaw and femur can paint a picture of which genus this specimen *may* fall under. The skull would enable scientists to place this find in relation to "Lucy" or any of the other "early man" finds. They would also be able to predict earlier or latter stages of evolution - if they had the skull.

g

When will we forget the past...

[Alien Chaos]

With all the talk about 2000, and the future we as a people are still confounded about where we came from. I doubt we will ever know for sure why can we all just move on to build a better future. With the seniors not wanting change, the middle age people just trying to get by, the young adults blindly fumbeling ahead. what are you doing to stop future generation from forgeting about where they came from and having pride in it.

Re:History and the government

[MasterOfDisaster]

That's the way the world works.
anything in relitively small amounts in indistingushable from nothingness

Re:Wow!

[platypus_of_doom]

dryopithecus is believed to be the common ancestor of the great apes and man, but not necessarily the most recent one. It is definitely the oldest known apelike primate.

History and the government

[Chacham]

Archaeologists works with millions of years, and the government works with millions of dollars. If something were found to be thousands of years older, or costs thousands of dollars more, it wouldn't be worth reporting. I guess the sheer greatness of these numbers overwhelms us so, that the effect is completely lost, as we couldn't possibly fathom it anyway.

Sceptical.

[Black Parrot]

The article isn't perfectly clear, but this sounds like more of the recent lamentable process of Science by Press Release, rather than the traditional Science by Peer Review. Announcing it to stir up excitement, eh? You're less likely to look a fool if you figure out exactly what you have, first.

Other telling points -

The field workers are "sure" they can find more remains related to this find. How could they possibly be "sure" of such a thing? Willpower does not produce fossils. Hard work doesn't even guarantee it. (Assuming no Piltdown-style fraud.)

And the bit about the cat and the tree. Give me a break. It's not hard to understand why 6,000,000 year old remains might be scattered around a bit. Show me the code^w tooth marks.

--

Six.. or Five Million Years To Earth?

[SEWilco]

I'll really get interested if they find giant grasshoppers and a spaceship [universalstudios.com] buried there.

Is this on a pig too?

[Life Blood]

Nebraska man, the first pre-human ancestor who was ever found was actually a pig. Go figure. Since then we've had several partial chimp skeletons and one chinese guys lunch (peking man) proclaimed our earliest ancestors. I'll see it when I believe it.

Hopefully they weren't ancient archeologists...

[human bean]

That just happened to die at their site, and got covered again. It would be just our luck to find the improbable case, and then try to build science out of it.

If the remains do turn out to match the strata dates, this could change estimated evolution rates quite a bit.