New Fossil Sheds Light On Lucy's Family Tree

I_am_sci_guy writes "A new fossil of an older, and presumably male, specimen of the same species as the famed Lucy indicates that A. afarensis may have walked and moved more like humans than was currently believed. The features of the unusually complete skeleton 'denote a nearly humanlike gait and ground-based lifestyle,' according to anthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie and his team, who found the specimen they call 'Big Man' and published preliminary results online today at PNAS (abstract; full text requires subscription). The article includes plenty of viewpoints dissenting from the conclusion that A. afarensis walked, and possibly ran, like modern humans do."

Comments

Re:In a stunning announcement

[shriphani]

Creationists are on a mission to troll their kids.

No subscription required

[interactive_civilian]

Ummm... the full text of the PNAS article does NOT require a subscription. Just click the "Full Text (PDF)" link.

Or at least, I have access using no logins and accessing via a standard ISP in Thailand. :-/

Re:No subscription required

[interactive_civilian]

I'm not at a university. And, I can access PNAS from both work and school and download at will. Maybe the National Academy of Sciences hates Canada? ;)

They blew the nickname

[PapayaSF]

They find the male counterpart of Lucy, and nickname him "Big Man"? It would have been much more fun to name him "Ricky."

Re:They blew the nickname

[Alarindris]

Even better, call him Linus :)

Biped

[fermion]

From the nature write up it appears that this, along with older fossils, seems to push back bipedal Hominini to about 3.5 millions year. Almost 2 meters tall, a pelvis that seems modern, and a long tibia. I am not so sure why the scientists are arguing about how these creatures walked, the agreement on a bipedal Lucy and relatives seems pretty impressive, and meant that our ancestors could run when they hunt the might dinosaur.

Re:Biped

[ByteSlicer]

and meant that our ancestors could run when they hunt the might dinosaur.

In that case it also meant they could time-travel more than 60 million years into the past...

Re:Biped

[radtea]

I am not so sure why the scientists are arguing about how these creatures walked,

/. seems even more borken today than usual, but I'll try responding to this anyway (I'm assuming the dino joke was a joke...)

It's been pretty clear for quite a while now that upright bipedalism was an early feature in human evolution, where "quite a while" means "at least 20 years". But as the persistence of Creationism after a century of obvious falsity suggests, humans are deeply wedded to myths about our origins, and within the paleoanthropological community as well as popular culture there has been a big effort to build myths around human evolution.

Perhaps the largest of those myths is "man made tools and tools made man": the idea that once tool-use, including fire, became part of proto-human life we were on a slippery evolutionary slope to big brains. Upright bipedalism in this myth is necessary to free our hands to work with and carry tools.

This myth is comforting to the weak-minded because it seems to suggest that evolution "toward" modern humans was a quasi-purposive process driven by the reproductive benefits of improved tool-making and tool-use [*].

Early bipedalism blows this myth out of the water. If proto-humans were upright bipedal creatures so early on, those traits clearly had nothing much to do with tool use, and the certain fact that the evolution of our large, opera-writing, space-ship-building brains is nothing but the consequence of a huge series of unrelated accidents.

We happened to have a body plan that resulted in us being able to do something more useful than tell dirty jokes after run-away sexual selection blew our brain out into its current magnificent proportions. Once that entirely accidental potential was realized, about 50,000 years ago, there has likely been some evolutionary pressure toward more effective tool use and whatnot, up until the last 200 years, anyway.

But the process that got us here wasn't some million-year ramp we climbed. It was a fun-house ride that dumped us out at the end with a brain that could reflect on itself, and eventually ask how it got here, and learn by carefully examining the world what the answers were... all while some insane nutjobs were screaming nonsense and threatening violence if we instead didn't listen to their fantasic gibberish.

Early upright bipedalism challenges all the myths, and people hate that.

[*] Yeah, there's a joke in there, and since your brain was evolved specifically to entertain and be entertained by members of the opposite sex, it's one that pretty much everyone here is aware of since our brains were all the result of the same process.

Re:In a stunning announcement

[Hognoxious]

Creationism is science - deal with it!

How do they expect to fit creationism into the curriculum? My kids are already doing four hours of astrology and alchemy per week, and next semester the oldest starts graphology.

Oops. Free access for developing countries

[interactive_civilian]

Oops. I spoke too soon on that previous. PNAS offers free access to many developing countries, including Thailand. List here:

http://www.pnas.org/misc/faq.shtml#developing

Oh well... if anyone without access really wants to read the original paper, send me an email and I'll be happy to send you the PDF. Put something like "Slashdot - PNAS article PDF" in your subject line, please.

...and I pronounce Linux as Linux

[tepples]

They find the male counterpart of Lucy

Even better, call him Linus :)

What does Mr. Torvalds have to do with Lucille Ball? Or maybe I just have peanuts for brains...

Ostrich == dinosaur

[tepples]

Dinosaurs still exist. They're just called birds now.

Re:In a stunning announcement

[tsalmark]

NO it is not. The funny thing about science is you can test your theories. The theories of Creationism all fail basic testing. Or are stated in such a way that they are not testable, therefore they are not science.

Re:In a stunning announcement

[tsalmark]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity has links to 50 some odd references and a few references to publications of tests including B. Bertotti, L. Iess and P. Tortora, "A test of general relativity using radio links with the Cassini spacecraft", Nature 425, 374 (2003).

Creationism is NOT science

[Gavrielkay]

Science does not fall back on the invisible friend in the sky to explain what it does not currently understand. Scientists may not have all the answers, but at least they are looking for ways to find them. Hand waving and saying "God did it" is a dead end that can never expand human knowledge the way science can.

Re:Creationism is NOT science

[Chosen Reject]

Is English not your first language? Do you not understand the difference between "species" and "life"? Abiogenesis deals with how life started. If a book about it were to be titled similar to Darwin's work it would be titled "On the Origin of Life".

Am I the only one?

[ajdowntown]

The article includes plenty of viewpoints dissenting from the conclusion that A. afarensis walked, and possibly ran, like modern humans do.

Is anyone else as deeply offended by this as me? I, as a modern human, haven never, ever, in my life run, and am offended that I am associated with these prehistoric brutes.

Oh the humanity!

Re:In a stunning announcement

[SnarfQuest]

Couldn't be Adam and Eve. Dick Clark said he knew Adam and Eve, and these two look nothing like them. Abe Vigota agrees.