- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3034395/Why-baboon-bone-Lucy-s-skeleton-Scientists-make-bizarre-discovery-3-2-million-year-old-fossil-early-human.html
- Baboon bone was spotted by the American Museum of Natural History
- Researchers thought one of the vertebra bones was too small to fit Lucy
- They say the baboon bone was somehow mixed up with Lucy's remains
- Lucy is oldest and most complete fossil of an early human ever found
Lucy, the oldest and most complete fossil of an early human ever found, still has a few secrets to reveal.
Discovered
in 1974, the 3.2 million-year-old skeleton stunned archaeologists who
unearthed the fossil while digging in an isolated spot in the Afar
region of Ethiopia.
Now, a new look at the ancient hominin's skeleton suggests one of the bones may, in fact, belong to a baboon.
Lucy, the oldest and most complete
fossil of an early human ever found, still has a few secrets to reveal. A
new look at the ancient hominin's skeleton suggests one of the
vertebrae bones may belong to a baboon
Despite being uncovered 40 years ago, Lucy is still being studied to learn more about our ancestors.
The skeleton belongs to a species called Australopithecus afarensis and is around 40 per cent complete.
When discovered in Ethiopia, Lucy was the only skeleton of the species known; she would've stood 3.5 feet (about a meter) tall.
Currently,
more than 300 individuals of this species, which lived between about
3.85 million and 2.95 million years ago, have been uncovered
The strange
discovery of a baboon bone was made when Gary Sawyer and Mike Smith at
the American Museum of Natural History in New York began work on a
reconstruction of Lucy's skeleton (right)
The
strange discovery of a baboon bone was made when Gary Sawyer and Mike
Smith at the American Museum of Natural History in New York began work
on a reconstruction of Lucy's skeleton.
'Mike
pointed out that one of the [vertebra] fragments, which no one,
including me, had really paid close attention to, looked fairly small to
fit with the rest of Lucy's vertebral column,' Scott Williams at New
York University told the New Scientist.
The
researchers thought one possible explanation was that the fragment was
missed up with another, younger member of Lucy's species.
A comparative study of vertebrae from other Australopithecus fossils in that region disproved this theory.
WHEN LITTLE FOOT WALKED THE EARTH WITH LUCY
The researchers analysed 11 rock
samples from around the nearly complete Little Foot fossil skeleton from
theSterkfontein Caves to gauge its age
Scientists
have revealed a sophisticated new datingtechnique shows that Little
Foot, an important fossil of anearly human forerunner unearthed in the
1990s in South Africa,is roughly 3.7 million years old.
'The
age of Little Foot has been highly debated,' saidgeologist Darryl
Granger of Purdue University in Indiana, whoseresearch appears in the
journal Nature.
The
study found Little Foot, a member of the speciesAustralopithecus
prometheus, lived at roughly the same time asAustralopithecus afarensis,
the species whose most famousfossil, known as Lucy, comes from
Ethiopia.
Both species blended ape-like and human-like traits but with different features.
The
researchers analysed 11 rock samples from around thenearly complete
Little Foot fossil skeleton from theSterkfontein Caves to gauge its age.
The findings may have important implications about theevolutionary relationships among humankind's ancient relatives.
The
team then compared it to the vertebrae of other creatures living in
that region 3.2 million years ago, and found a baboon bone was the
closest fit.
Williams
told New Scientist that the fossil of a gelada baboon thoracic vertebra
must have somehow been mixed up with Lucy's remains.
The team now plan to present their findings at the Paleoanthropology Society in San Francisco next week.
Our species, Homo sapiens, appeared roughly 200,000 yearsago.
Earlier members of the human genus, Homo, date back morethan 2 million years.
Our
genus was predated by other species onthe human family tree including
various representatives of Lucy's genus Australopithecus.
Dr
Simon Underdown, principal lecturer in anthropology at Oxford Brookes
University, said: 'The co-mingling of skeletons is quite common in the
archaeological record and it can often be difficult to separate out
different elements if multiple bodies are mixed together.
'Lucy
was not found in association with lots of other different bones and was
painstakingly studied during excavation and description. Mistakes can
of course be made with 1000s of fragments but that wasn’t the case here.
'Even
if one fragment of a bone from the spine turns out to be from a baboon
it does not alter the larger picture of what Lucy brings to the story of
human evolution.'
Our
genus was predated by other species onthe human family tree including
various representatives of thegenus Australopithecus, of which Lucy
(reconstruction pictured) belonged to
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